Thursday, June 3, 2010

21 thousand questions

If 2 is the year of defiance, and 3 is the year of more defiance, then 4 is the year of defiance and interrogation. In the car today (prime spot for rapid-fire Mommy-questioning), I got the following litany from the boy:
  • Why do we have boogers? (Just today he started calling them boogers instead of mucus. Sad, sad day.)
  • Why can't we eat boogers?
  • Why do we get lots of boogers when we cry?
  • Why can't we put things in our eyes?
  • Does it hurt when a bug gets in your eye?
  • How does the bug get out of your eye?
  • Is the bug alive when it gets out of your eye?
And then, apropos of nothing (which really should be the title of the blog these days):
  • What can run faster than a cheetah?
Honestly, I feel like I'm on a months-long episode of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and I've long since run out of lifelines. Who is equipped to answer all these questions? I honestly do try my best (encouraging natural curiosity and all), but come on! Why do we get boogers when we cry? Who can answer that?*

* If you can, please do, and also include your phone number so Sidamo can ring you up next time he hits his least favorite question: Why don't you know, Mommy?

3 comments:

D said...

At least there are no "how does a baby get in your belly" questions!

My suggested responses-

Boogers:

When you're doing you regular breathing in and out, the hairs inside your nose grab all the junk floating around in the air you can hardly see - the stuff like when you look towards a sunshiny window and see stuff floating around. A nice portion of that floating around stuff is dead skin coming off your (and your mom and dad and sis's) body.

Then when you cry, some of the tears go down the inside of your face and some go down the outside. When the tears go in the inside, the wet tears mix with the dried up booger dust and skin cells and then it's like making mud pies - except that it's really a flesh slurry.

The hair in your nose can't hang onto slime, just like you can't hang onto slime in your fingers. (Imagine holding a dirt clump that suddenly changes to a mud.) So the flesh slurry (I mean boogers) flows out of your nose down your lips and right into your mouth for a tasty snack.

And so, my dear son, every time you eat your boogers, it's like you are a little cannibal eating people parts.

Why don't you know, Mommy?:
I used to know those things, but every time you toot or breathe your stinky morning breath on me, it kills a bunch of my brain cells. The answer to *that* question was in the brain cells that died on October 19th when you had that giant toxic poop in MY bathroom.

Hard to believe I'm not employed in the Social Services field, eh?

Stormy said...

We also get these questions all day long. (I really feel for the daycare teachers - do all the kids ask questions all day long?)

Our problem is that no answer is good enough. It's always followed up with things like "Why boogers are formed when things get in your nose?"

My favorite answer is "I don't know. Why do you think ..."

Bridget said...

Um, I think I need "D" in my backseat!! Awesome!