Stupid Questions - My gift to Erma

It's done! I present to you (after plenty of chocolate and no small amount of tears) my submission to the 2010 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition!!!! A week early!!!!

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Stupid Questions


I’ve been told there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but that’s a lie because I was asked one this morning.

“Mom! Do we have anything to eat?”

“No, sweetie. While you were sleeping a gang of squirrels snuck in through the dog door and ravaged the pantry. You’ll have to go over to Grandma’s.”

Pointless questions are resistant to penicillin and as irritating as hemorrhoids, making them impossible to ignore. I must be easily susceptible because I’ve fielded hundreds of mindless inquiries. I’ve heard it all, from “what’s that smell?” to “where’d that pee come from?” Some questions are best ignored or spritzed with bleach.

“Are you busy?”
“When are you going to wake up?”
“Is something burning?”

I noticed that the volume of stupid questions increased when I married and has grown exponentially with every conception thereafter. Accosting me with something completely irrelevant is not only an urgent need, but highly contagious. I once found myself explaining to a four year-old why lizards didn’t speak English at the exact moment her sister wondered aloud if muffins could have babies. I believe an ulcer burst.

I’m not immune to asking a stupid question or two; after all, we’re products of our environment. “Does anyone know where the goldfish is?” was particularly ludicrous since there are only two places in the house that contain more than a gallon of water and I hadn’t checked the toilet yet. Last week I opened up the door to the laundry room and couldn’t stop myself from shouting, “Whose bright idea was it to put ham in the dryer?!”

I didn’t expect a tiny voice from down the hall to holler back, “It was Dad’s!”

Unfortunately, the only cure for a dumb question is an equally dense response. A teacher I had in high school once told the class that if we asked a stupid question, we’d get a stupid answer. That seemed reasonable. If it worked on teenagers, I thought, why wouldn’t it work on the preschool set? I got my answer when the pastor called after Sunday school to inform me that the correct comeback to “Why can’t I vacuum the grass?” is not “because it makes Jesus cry.” I also learned that there are no commandments prohibiting me from drinking mouthwash until I pass out.

As long as there’s a woman alive to ask, “Do I look fat in this?” stupid questions will exist. There’s no vaccination to quell the outbreak, no preventative measures short of intermittent hearing loss. Just paste on a smile and ask, “Is there room at the asylum for one more?”

 
(c) 2010, Kelsey Robbins