Saturday, June 5, 2010

Who, what, when, where and why

You know you've been really delinquent about updating a blog when your husband and father make mention of it. To illustrate, the last time I wrote a post we had three feet of snow on the ground; today it was 90 degrees and Zoe and I spent a good part of the day in the pool. Once again, I'll try and get better. Now on to the quarterly post.

The definition of a question: a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply. "In order to get information" is really the key here. Zoe asks me somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty-two thousand questions in a day and none of them seem to be in an effort to gain information. Questions, quid pro quo sorts of conversations, should really involve some sort of development of intellect. Questions, when Zoe is involved, actually chip away at intellect (and sanity) until your intellect is a puddle of nothing, scampering out the door to avoid further damage.

Questions normally take on a linear form; question gets asked, answer gets replied. I am learning that the mind of a three-year-old works more circularly, the way a sink hole might. Here is one of today's samples:
Me (mumbling to myself, I should learn not to do this): I wonder if I should change lanes?
Zoe: What did you say mommy?
Me: I was wondering if if I should change lanes.
Zoe: Change lanes?
Me: Yes
Zoe: Why are you changing lanes?
Me: Because I want to get around this traffic.
Zoe: Why do you want to get around traffic?
Me: Because it's slowing us down.
Zoe: Why are we slowing down?
Me: Because of the traffic
Zoe: Why is there traffic?
Me (while I am changing lanes): I'm not sure
Zoe: Why are you changing lanes?
Me: Because of the traffic
You can sort of see where this is going.

Normally the questions are more inane. Why is this cup blue? Where are those people (strangers) going? Why are you wearing that shirt? There are no real answers, not good ones anyway. And while I attempt to stop the onslaught of questions with answers (she must be satisfied with one of my conclusions), this strategy works about as well as shooting cement and old tires into a oil leak, I just simply get more questions. I am afraid one day I will have a nightmare where I am talking to Zoe only to have her pull off her Zoe mask revealing she is really Bill Clinton who will then proceed to ask me what the definition of "is" is.

I suppose the inane questions should be a relief. Some day I will be fielding questions involving
existentialism and where babies come from. I anticipate that they will be markedly more difficult to answer than why is my plate is green.

For now, anticipate a post about how the onslaught of questions sometimes deteriorates into my parental pack of lies (all the kids are leaving the playground) and of course I always have the tried and true, because I'm your mother and I said so. Let's just say, I love you Zoe, no question.



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