Kids Have All the Answers

My sister has taken to finding creative ways to remind me that I haven't blogged lately. This morning she mailed me a link to an absolutely hilarious blog (www.jadenotjaded.wordpress.com) that made me feel guilty for not blogging myself. Soooooo, here I gooooo.

I have decided that some of life's most interesting questions aren't philosophical, they're child-initiated. In the course of any given day my sons will ask me the usual things like, "Why is the sky blue?" or "Would our heads blow up in space if we didn't have a spacesuit on?" Then there are the days with questions that will be forever stamped upon my brain preventing any possibility of forgetting them. For example, the other night Austin asked me, "Mom, do you know how you can tell if a fart is really going to stink?" Not paying full attention (mistake #1), I took the bait.....,"hmmmm, how is that son?" Providing him with the necessary launching pad for sharing his most recent hypothesis, he quickly lept right in. "Welllll, if you have to work really hard to get it out....it'll be stinky for sure. But if it just sort of slips out (complete with very smooth hand gestures), you probably won't smell it at all!" And here comes mistake #2. "How did you come to this conclusion son?" (hereby fully vesting myself in this conversation). "Oh, the guys (his 7-year-old buddies) and I were talking about it at recess.

This prompted one of my famous "visions." I could so easily picture my child standing around, just like in a scene from some mobster movie, with his pals and a thick New Jersey accent. The conversation would go something like this:

Bennie: So Sal, I been thinkin'.....
Sal: Yeah Bennie, whas that?
Bennie: You know how Joey's always stinkin' it up?
Sal: Sure, sure.
Bennie: Well I bet he could warn us if he wanted to.
Joey: How'd I do that?
Bennie: I can't tell you here - people are listening.....Fuhgedaboutit!