The questions never cease.
The girls are on to me, and know that I’m busy jotting down what they ask.
So sometimes, I don’t jot. I just answer.
Other times, I jot, and I research, and I answer. Maybe it’s no coincidence that this happens to happen with the coolest of questions, such as …
1. Does an animal’s horn bleed?
I’ve done a lot of brave and stupid things, girls.
Stopping traffic to move a turtle. Talked Arizona Cardinals pre-Super Bowl smack to a table full of Pittsburgh Steelers fans at a Cracker Barrel. Wrote about losing my pants on a soccer field.
I won’t slug a rhino to answer this one, though (although I promise to write about the time I wrestled that dern longhorn at Lazy 5 for head-butting our van door).
An animal’s horn is like our fingernail, if our fingernail could rip through the roof of a train car like that rhino’s did in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and is made up of keratin, just like our fingernails.
I suppose if you cut the rhino’s horn really short – like daddy might or might not have done to any of your fingernails at some point in your lifetimes – it would bleed, but I wouldn’t want to stick around to find out.
One day, ask me who would win in a fight, a rhino or a hippo. That could be fun research.
2. Are some flowers green?
All flowers are green, sweetheart. What’s more environmentally sound than a flower? They recycle. They don’t fill landfills. They leave the tidiest of carbon footprints. When have you ever seen one use a plastic grocery sack?
Green milkweed is green. Ginseng’s green. So is wild sarsaparilla, alumroot, and Jack-in-the-pulpit (which the Meskwaki indians used to mix with meat, leave it out for their enemies, then sit back and watch as pain and death set in. According to legend.)
Let’s not forget Black Snakeroot, Smooth Solomon’s Seal, and the Ragged Fringed Orchid. Elise, seeing these green flowers reminds me of when you used to color when you were little, taking care to stay in the lines on each and every part – but using only one color on the whole picture.
How can you have started high school already? That was just yesterday.
Enough waxing nostalgic. To see some cool pictures of green roses, click here.
3. What happens if a baseball player gets hit in the stomach?
Well, I imagine there’s an element of embarrassment. Followed by, if he’s smart, an appreciation that the shot didn’t make its impact a foot lower on his anatomy.
Of course, there are those who purposely make contact with a baseball using their bellies, as you can see here (notice the uniform the kid is wearing. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.)
Catchers are the only players with God-approved apparatus to protect their bellies. And God should approve such things. I mean, there’s a flaw in the whole skeletal system.
We get a skull to protect our brain, a nice rib cage to encase our heart and lungs, even knee caps to protect all those ligaments athletes tend to tear. But when it comes to our intestines and stomach and pancreas, you’re on your own, vital organs.
And that’s just wrong.
This is not a campaign for male protection of the danger zone. This isn’t because I don’t wish for it, but just imagine – shows such as America’s Funniest Videos wouldn’t exist without the backyard ritual of dad taking one in the cods when he’s trying to teach his kid to “keep and eye on the ball and keep your swing level.”
It’s a rite of passage, really.
4. Why do girls carry their mobile phones in their back pocket?
I’ve noticed this phenomenon. There’s a demographic: Young women seem to think the best spot for their mobile is in their back pocket.
(I disagree. The change pocket on jeans is ideal. A lot of modern slacks have a pocket within a front pocket that seems tailor-made for just this purpose. I bet you women didn’t know that.)
Back-pocket mobile-phone storage seems a key ingredient for Cellphone in Toilet Soup. I know of one girl, indirectly, who has actually done this, but I won’t write anything that could link her as a friend of one of my daughters.
This possibility is precisely why fellows cannot carry them back there. We’d drop them in the loo, and probably not even notice until we get home and everyone wonders why we didn’t answer.
I talked to a girl named Rebecca coming out of the supermarket the other day. She was tiny, like a loaf of Italian bread. She’d just bought beer and a candy bar, and her phone was sticking out of her back pocket, so I asked her why she carries it back there, expecting the most fruitful of knowledge nuggets to come from her sunburned and slightly baffled face.
“It don’t fit in the front,” she said, pulling the phone from her back pocket and demonstrating her six-word explanation in actions, too. Sometimes, it’s just that easy. It.don’t.fit.
5. Why is gold so valuable?
Well, you get gold only if you 1) win first place; 2) get proposed to; or 3) receive a lucrative music/athletic/acting contract, that allows you to afford gold medallions, rings and grills.
Pirates dig it. So do conquistadors and pioneers.
It’s shiny, inert (doesn’t corrode, degrade, or rust, which is what they’d yell several times if there were an infomercial for gold); extremely malleable (you can twist it, stretch it, shape it, and it won’t break or crack, which is another thing they’d holler on that infomercial); and conducts energy like a champ – although, I don’t think NBA stars and Aztec warriors roll into jewelry stores and battle with the thought, “Onward, in the name of the most efficient means of conducting energy!” (This doesn’t even take into account the percentage of non-Earth visitors who are said to want to colonize our planet to mine its gold – but really, tariffs would be a pain in the asteroid).
And as a girl named Bree pointed out on Yahoo Answers, “Gold is so pretty. That’s why.”
Even funnier than a rhino vs. hippo fight.
Just a dad ... 
Yes, the phone doesn’t fit right in the front pocket of women’s pants for some strange reason. Haha! And if you have any gold to share, please do… Not only is it pretty, but worth $$$. 🙂
Maybe I should dish out a nugget to everyone who leaves a comment. Wait, does that mean I count too for replying to a comment?
Dads also have the luxury of cargo shorts to store our phones, but when it starts to vibrate, there’s a 12-second period of us searching for which pocket we put it in. Usually, the call’s gone to voicemail by then.
They make women’s front pockets incredibly small and sometimes they are even fake pockets. Never nice and roomy like a guy’s. And then sometimes if they are it’s usually on lightweight baggy pants, and if you put your phone in, it droops your pants down or hangs in a weird position and makes you look like a tranny with a package. Question answered. 🙂
I will never understand the fake pockets, or better, the tiny pockets that you could not fit anything of any consequence in, besides maybe an Advil. We boys do have pockets plenty.
I’d use your answer on the kids, but then I’d have to answer questions about trannies. And packages.
This is funny! I love the questions our kiddos give to us. I learned something new here (the whole horn/fingernail thing), and I look forward to reading your Lazy 5 story some day!
I am working on a question that deals with why a woman can lift up her skirt a little bit on her thigh and get a taxi cab to stop (they saw this happen on Nancy Drew). Still working on that answer.
I’m learning as much as they are – definitely didn’t know about green flowers!
Oh, the Lazy 5 Ranch is an incredible story. Stay tuned.
Thanks Rosey!
It must suck having to fish for your phone because you forgot to take it out of your back pocket before sitting. That’s never happened to me! Ok, just kidding. I’ll admit it…I’ve lost one phone that way. It really does suck! lol
Having had to fish out princess bracelets out of the jon, yeah, that’s not the best thing to do with your phone! Did you flush your phone??
Who me? No of course I didn’t flush the phone! haha…I would have flushed if I didn’t hear the giant splash that came out of no where…but that phone never worked right after that…I count it as a loss.
It kind of all went down the toilet after that.
My son says, “Hey, Mom?” at least 1,000 times a day. I’d love to take the time to research it all but … and as I’m writing this response he said it again … UGH … Right now I can shut him up with my own question: Are you done with your homework yet? I admire your willingness to research answers but as a single mom, I defer to Google. I can’t do or answer everything. However, I must admit, your kids probably feel very loved because their Dad cares enough to do his homework.
Kids tend to want to eat and have questions answered, every day, apparently. Luckily, trivia and food are two of my specialties. I won’t pretend I’m not googling the answers, either. Now when they ask something, they’ll follow it with, “is this going on the blog, dad?” Makes me wonder if they’ll end up blogging about me someday.
Yeah, mentioning homework is the magic way to clear the room.
I always say, “Go ask your daddy.” lol!!! They asked some great questions and you are full of great answers!!
Thanks! And we always say, “go ask your mommy,” if it’s about any form of permission.
I’m full of something, all right! I have learned a lot of good stuff, though. They have at least five more questions in the queue. Is it Friday yet?
ha! this is fantastic! i have a 14 year old boy who likes to argue and most of my evenings are spent arguing about something and end with us at the computer to see who was “right.” however one argument that has gone on and on (taken in all the seriousness that a debate should be taken in) is: who would win the fight between a tiger and grizzy bear (side argument a tiger and a lion). my money is on the tiger in both fights. we googled this and fun fact, there’s a lot of google hits for this but no definitive answer. feel free to weigh in here!
I try to tell the girls about that ancient thing we called encyclopedias. Not as quick as Google, and you could get easily distracted if you were looking for something and ran across the section about dinosaurs.
Just asked my 11-year-old about the tiger-grizzly bear battle. “That’s a weird question,” she said. Then she chose the tiger, before waffling again. She should be a politician. I’m going to side with the grizzly, because of a movie I saw not long ago. By weight and might. What a battle, though.
I think a rhino would give them both a run for their money.
Geez, now you have me thinking of animal cage matches.
Love this post!
How I wish my husband was here to answer all the questions our three-year-old ask. I get stumped most of the time, haha!
Thanks! They’re good about asking the stumpable questions. I don’t want to give it away, but I will divulge that, for a future blog, I have to research how chickens meet their maker in the chicken factory.
I never carry my phone in my back pocket. How strange! I’m still waiting for the invention of body Velcro, where you can just stick your phone on you, easily accessible, without digging for it in your purse, etc. It’s always such a treat to read a Dad blog! Thanks for being such a good sport on our Battles;)
I’d think there’d be a greater danger of sitting on the phone, am I right? I like the body velcro idea. I’d have to use it for my keys and wallet, too, and preferably, a snack. Maybe magnets under your skin for just that purpose. Of course, if you go to the hardware store, and walk down the aisle with screws and nails …
Maybe your velcro idea is best.
Thanks for stopping by!
Great post!! Still chuckling being that I get bombarded by the same machine gun questioning… so nice to find out that this happens to others as well.
I will happily field any and all questions, with the relief that they haven’t asked where babies come from, or why Clint Black is white and Barry White was black.
Thanks Carla!