#158 — Twenty (Thousand) Questions

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Having children is like signing up for an eighteen-year stint on a quiz show. Day in and day out you’ll be peppered with rapid-fire questions the way shooting gallery ducks are pelted with BBs. Even before your children can speak, you know that they’re storing up questions so that their first complete sentence will be a noodle-scratcher like “Why is the speed of light considered a universal constant?”

Actually, no child asks that. Which is a real pity because at least you could look up the answer in any conveniently handy book on quantum physics. Instead, your children will test the limits of your understanding with seemingly innocent questions.

When my oldest was three, I introduced him to the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. We’d just gotten to the part where Malificent crashes the party. As an adult, it was easy to see why she hadn’t been invited; She was bad mannered and about as much fun as dermatologist at a tanning center. My son asked, “Why is she being a bad guy?”

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Like this excerpt? Want the whole story? Listen to the audio version by clicking the ‘Play’ button at the top of this post. If you’d rather read it, you can find the full text at http://myfavoriteshortcomings.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/twenty-thousand-questions/

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Notes:

• Special thanks to Twitter Pal Ogre_Kev for “multiasking”
• Thanks, too to CoolB for the congratulatory note.
• Celine and Chloe are the talented daughters of Sam “The Money Geek” Fawaz
• I’m on Facebook at this link.