Decades ago, my father told me a joke that stayed with me. A woman was at the funeral parlor following the death of her beloved husband. She told the funeral director that she wanted to see the body before the service, and he took her in privately and opened the coffin.

“Oh no, no, no,” she said. “I told you to put him the blue suit, not the brown suit. This will never do.”

“No problem, madam,” the funeral director replied. “I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.”

“How is that possible,” she cried? “The service is about to start, and you have to change his entire suit!”

“On the contrary, madam,” the funeral director calmly explained. “We don’t have to change the suit at all. We just have to change the head.”

As an old Nebraska judge occasionally notes, I sometimes connect dots that other people don’t see. I often think of this old joke when people passionately explain to me why their solution will change everything for the better. Maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there. But maybe they don’t realize they’re only changing the head.

I think of this joke often, but rarely mention the punch line as it would be a little too meta for my own good and impossible for anyone else to connect the dots. But now you know it, so it may appear from time to time.