John K., I thought they had "fixed" it, so you're really not the only one.
I don't know if it was only true with VFP 3.0 beta (which is what I started with), but Christian is right, or at least was at one time. I also don't know what any earlier versions, did either; but I know that at one time VFP did have this problem.
I ran into this problem way early on, so I started putting the SELECT before the ENDSCAN. I'm a lazy programmer - I don't do stuff like that if I don't have to. It's been a habit with me ever since. (Like I said, I'm lazy - I even added this to my CEE SCAN/ENDSCAN macro!)
Not too long ago I was trying to convince some of my co-workers that this was or had been the case, and I couldn't duplicate it.
So, from personal experience, I can definitely say that everyone is right on this one (or at least used to be). :-)
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.