Grandma Girl here, a listener named Becky had a question about present and past tense.

She wanted to know which of the following was correct.

The girl who was next to me was named Stephanie, or the girl who was next to me is named Stephanie.

I'm assuming that the Stephanie she's talking about is someone who Becky knows is still

alive and still named Stephanie.

On the other hand, she wants to use the past tense because the other verb in the sentence

is in the past tense.

And she doesn't want to switch tenses needlessly.

On the other hand, if it's still true that the girl is named Stephanie, wouldn't she

want to use the present tense?

Becky's question reminds me of a radio commercial I heard years ago.

I'll just slip into the historical present tense to recount their conversation to tell

you about it.

An older man and probably his grandson are talking about a local ice cream shop.

The grandfather says they used to make the best milkshakes, and he reminisces about just

how good those shakes were.

Then he says, in fact, let's go get one right now.

The grandson says, wait a minute, you said they used to make the best shakes.

And the grandfather replies, yep, and they still do.

Did the grandfather lie?

I think we can agree that he didn't lie in a strict sense, but he certainly misled

and confused his grandson.

...