Interrogative

You know, having bright kids can be both a blessing and a curse.

Sometimes, I'm not exactly sure if it's more one or the other. But for better or worse, it keeps one on their parental toes.

Diminutive one is an inquisitive kid. He often asks a stream of questions that can leave me feeling both exhausted and distinctly inadequate in the intellectual sense.

We have family dinners as many nights as I can manage. During the winter, that's usually every night, including weekends. From March to October when they are playing baseball, it's harder, but we still eat dinner together at least 3-4 times a week.

Eating dinner together was something that my family always did growing up. I remember some of our really wonderful dinner conversations with fondess. Even still when we go to my parents house, we linger at the dinner table talking over coffee. It used to be that the kids left as soon as the meal was through, but now that they are older, they stay and listen.

We talk about everything from religion, to politics, to art, literature and history. My Dad is a WWII buff and the boys love to listen to him talk about it. He was in Vietnam, and the boys think it terribly glamorous and exciting that he was an honest to goodness soldier in an honest to goodness war.

There will come a day when he will explain to my boys that war is anything but glamorous, and why, but for now, he just answers their questions and basks in their admiration.

Sometimes the conversation at our dinner table was silly and lighthearted, sometimes it was more serious and thought provoking. But it always made us feel connected.

Quite often, Diminutive One's cavalcade of questions takes place while we are a captive audience at our own dinner table. Most of the time, I don't mind, because it has spawned some very interesting discussion.

Other times, I just want to eat, and maybe actually talk to my spouse a little.

We occasionally have to issue a "no talking" edict, because he gets so involved in his questioning that he forgets to eat.

The other place that I am often cross examined is the car. Diminutive One's therapist's office is quite a ways from our home; nearly an hour commute each way. When he was seeing her weekly, he used this time to his advantage.

It's amazingly difficult to be sufficiently erudite when one is endeavoring not to become someone else's hood ornament.

My son does not ask easy questions. He never has. I can't just rattle off some pat explanation, because he knows when I am not putting enough thought into my answers. If he is not satisfied, he will persist until I offer up something suitably academic.

Here are is a sampling of questions he has asked me just this week:

Is it a good thing to disrupt conventional thinking?

How do you disrupt conventional thinking?

(From an ADD commercial)

Have you ever considered making a newspaper?

How do you get paper big enought to print a newspaper?

(I have no idea where that came from)

What is an emissary?

(School vocabulary word)

What is diplomacy?

How do you become a diplomat?

(Prompted by my explanation of "emissary")

Was Elizabeth I alive when the 13 colonies were founded?

Why did Henry VII execute his wives? Why didn't he just get a divorce?

Why didn't Elizabeth want to get married?

Why did her sister want to kill her? Didn't they love each other?

Why did Protestants and Catholics hate each other?

Why did they call her a bastard when her Mom and Dad were married?

(We recently watched Elizabeth and Elizabeth; the Golden Age. She is one of my most admired historical figures)

Do you think George Washington Carver knew that people would love peanut butter cookies so much?

If he was such a famous inventor, how come nobody knows who he was?

(He is researching GWC for a school project and found that he discovered over 300 uses for peanuts)

What is prejudice?

Why did people think black people aren't smart?

Do they still think that?

(Again, the explanation spawns more questions than it answers)

Why was Beethoven so sad if he could write such great songs?

Why does that one song make me feel like crying when I feel happy listening to it?

Why didn't they call a doctor so he could live longer?

(We also watched Immortal Beloved recently, "that one song" is Ode to Joy.)

Don't judge me, it's been really rainy here and he's had the flu.

How come some people don't believe in evolution when we have such an extensive fossil record?

(I swear to God he said that. He loves Bill Nye.)

What happens to people who don't believe in God when they die?

Do they just disappear?

(Spirituality is an ongoing topic of discussion in our home. Go figure.)

Can you see how such relentless questioning can wear a person down?

I don't get easy stuff like Why is the sky blue? or Where do babies come from? Oh no. I get deep, abstruse, philosophical stuff that I not only have to answer, but couch in terms that a 9 year old can understand.

Last night at the table, I was trying to explain "diplomacy", but I was simply too weary. I asked husband for help. He gave me an evil grin and said. "I'm eating."

Gee, thanks for the support, hun.

Sometimes, I just have to tell Diminutive One that my mind is too tired to answer questions any more, which usually elicits an apology from him.

"I'm sorry Mom, there's just so much stuff to know. I'm afraid I'll never know all the stuff I want to know."

I know how he feels.

I wish I could just gather up all the knowledge that he craves so much and deposit it into the spongy gray runnels of his beautiful brain. But then, I think...that would deprive him of the joy of revelation; the challenge of exploration, the thrill of realization.

And that makes me think of how very, very far he has come. Once, learning was a chore. Now, it is a voyage of discovery; one that he embraces with the passion of the young who are so innocently hungy.

That makes me ridiculously happy.

Even if it is flippin exhausting.