What's the most unanswerable question you had as a kid? Pure silliness only! (1 Viewer)

[Bryan X]

When my son was about three, for the longest time he would say things like, "back when I was a dog". He made references to previously being a dog quite a few times and we had no idea why.

Then it dawned on us. Not long before he started saying things like that, we had been to a Chinese restaurant where they had placemats with the animals signs associated with your year of birth. He was born during the year of the dog and during dinner, we had told the kids "what they were".

 

[Martino]

I had a strange question for my church youth leader when I was in high school....

"If Adam and Eve were the first humans - then they had kids - who did their kids have children with?"

And of course, I had to go just one step farther....

"Since there were no other people, then their kids had to have kids with each other. Wouldn't that be incest? And if so, then we are all a product of incest - so why is incest wrong?"

I got a very big eye roll on that one, but never did get an answer. As it turns out, I ended up teaching this same class when I got older – and I use this example as an example of “no questions are stupid questions….but some are worse than others…”

 

[MatthewA]

I also just told my mother that I used to believe that to "make ends meet" was actually about "end's meat," a type of meat that poor people apparently couldn't afford (rump roast, perhaps?).

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I remember in fifth or six grade, when the concept of sex was just starting to sink in, I asked my mother. "So wait. If guys have the outies and girls have the innies, how do gay people do it?"
To my immediate horror, my mother explained it to me. I never had to learn any of the secrets of life from classmates or magazines. Mom was a nurse, she'd seen it all, she'd heard it all, and there was no bullshit about it.

 

[Malcolm R]

Don't ask the question if you're not prepared for the answer.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

When I was 13 (in 1963) I got a paper route. The first thing I did with my first profits was try to purchase a Playboy magazine at a 7/11 store, but they wouldn't sell it to me. I told my Danish stepmom. She piled me into the '58 Buick and drove me to the 7/11 and bought it for me.

 

[Buzz Foster]

Adam:

I'm gay and out, and I work with a lot of straight guys. I think the ones who have the hardest time dealing with me as a person are the ones who ponder that exact question, but who want no answer. I figure they can Google it if they want to know. You're lucky...nothing to shock you, now.

As far as my own youthful, linquistic inaccuracies:

At one time I did not understand the difference between retired and retarded. I can remember thinking it quite aweful that some of my grandpa's friends had to quit working because they had become retarded. I think this was one my mom actually got...I asked her if I would become retarded some day, and she told me I would have to have been born that way. Then, the incongruity was too obvious, and I asked the right questions to clear the mystery.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

My father suffered a heart episode this year which resulted in an emergency triple-bypass and an earlier retirement than planned. Now that he's recovered from surgery and got his strength and energy back, he's completely frustrated by the lack of stuff to do. When I call the folks and ask what's going on, he always jokes "well, now that I'm retarded -- absolutely nothing."