Essays by DAR

What They Ask in the 00's

(First published in Child)

"You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers." John J. Plomp


It's tough to be a parent in the Millennium. Used to be, you didn't have to have a Ph.D in Interactive Neurobiology to be one. You could pick up your parent's license at any nickel and dime just by having good intentions. Of course, those were the days when kids were still content to ask their parents such tried-and-true questions as "Why is the sky blue?" (The good-enough answer of which was, "Because it reflects the ocean, silly.")

No such luck in the 90's. These days, no self-respecting kid would be caught dead posing such an unsophisticated query. Here is a list of questions I was asked over the course of one year by my two budding geniuses. (You'll have to come up with your own good-enough answers. Mine was to say: "Huh! What a great question! Let's write it down and make a list and make a magazine article about it, OK?")


- how do dogs bark all night without getting hoarse?

- when people come out of month-long comas, have they kicked the smoking habit?

- do cats know when you're smiling?

- if there are upper and lower forms for letters, how come there are no upper and lower forms for numbers? What would a capital 4 look like?

- if the furnace leaks and water is all over the basement floor and it evaporates, how come there aren't clouds in the basement?

- why don't wild animals make paths through the woods?

- how come modern inventions weren't invented in ancient times? why didn't they invent a plane in 1066? how come the founding fathers didn't play Nintendo?

- how come we never see birds fall out of the sky? (they must die of old age in flight sometimes) and for that matter, why don't they ever collide in flight?

- how come only baseball players chew tobacco, and football players never do?

- how come the water does not sink through the bottom of a pond?

- how can mosquitoes bite you through clothes? how come a mosquito bite itches for awhile and then stops itching and then starts itching again? do mosquitoes bite each other? how many times can a mosquito bite you before he gets full?

- why don't people nap as often as cats and dogs? how come children hate naps, and adults love them?

- where do gnats go when it rains? where do fruit flies disappear to, after you wave them away?

- why don't spiders get caught in spider webs?

- how come the heart muscle doesn't get bigger from pumping all the time?

- do Japanese restaurant owners ever go to Indian restaurants?

- in the olden days, were there traffic signals for horse and buggies?

- how come the hula hoop was such a big fad in the 50's, but when it came back in the 90's it was only a small fad?

- is there such a thing as a lazy baby?

- are yawns contagious to blind people? why don't we yawn in our sleep?

- if you never open your doors or windows, where does the dust come from?

- why can't we catch colds from our hamsters?

- how do birds know when you've put out bird seed? how do they spread the word?

- if dogs cross-breed, why don't birds?

- are goldfish ever in bad moods?

- If you took a squirrel from Kansas, and set him loose at the Grand Canyon, would he be amazed at the change in scenery?

- if all things are still evolving, will monkeys one day soon discover the wheel?

- in a family of robins, do some have better singing voices than others?