The Philosopher

Perhaps inspired by his 4+ months of preschool, Andres has been asking questions left, right, and center about everything recently. A sampling:

(Note that these are ACTUAL questions that he has asked. I'm not making any of them up.)

"What does deer taste like?"
"Do you have to close your eyes when you fly through a cloud?"
"What's a state?"
"Do the Patriots always have to win?"
"Does the sun go around the earth?
"Is Slyde (the Revolution mascot) pretend?"
"Why does the green salt make the ice melt?"
"How is the water red?"
"Can astronauts fly?"

These do not come out of the blue--we'll usually be having a conversation about something, and then he'll pick up on one point and ask a tangential question. For example, the "closing your eyes when you fly through a cloud" question came after we noticed dark clouds on the horizon. I think we had also been talking about flying (which may also have prompted the "flying astronauts" question).

That question about eating deer, though? No idea. That's an outlier.

What I'm also realizing, though, is that the more questions he asks, the dumber I feel. I simply cannot answer with enough specificity or accuracy as to resolve his inquiry; instead, I fumble my way down an alley of poorly-justified rationales that only serve as the launching pad for more questions.

Andres: "Daddy, can astronauts fly?"
Me: "No."
Andres: "Why not?"
Me: "Well, astronauts don't have wings. They need a spaceship to fly."
Andres: "How do they fly the spaceship?"
Me: "They press buttons on the spaceship and it goes."
Andres: "Are there a lot of buttons?"
Me: "Yes, usually there are."
Andres: "Are they on the inside?"
Me: "Yes, the buttons are usually on the inside of the spaceship."
Andres: "Oh."

Those conversations are pretty great. We tend to end up at unexpected destinations, to say the least.

But at least his astronaut question was one that could be answered, especially if I knew more about aeronautics. He's also been asking questions that arise from either a faulty premise or, more usually, that show he has not yet grasped how the world works. From last night:

Andres: "Daddy, does the white team (Giants) or red team (49ers) have to win?"
Me: "Well, neither team has to win. They both want to win."
Andres: "But which team HAS to win?"


(I'm not sure what exactly he was trying to say here--perhaps he thought that the NFL games were fixed, and that the victor was always decided beforehand. Or maybe he thought it were vitally important that one team win. Or maybe he was just looking for a rooting interest, who knows.)

Me: "They can both win, but they can't both win at the same time. If the red team wins, then the white team loses. And if the white team wins, then the red team loses."

(The most ridiculous part about this whole post is that I ACTUALLY said this last line to my 4.5 year old son, like he was really old enough to understand that winning was a feat attained exclusively by one team, but that EITHER team may be the winner.)

Andres: "Oh."

This must have connected to something else he was thinking about, though, because soon afterwards he told me that he liked the white team AND the red team, AND all the other teams, AND the Patriots, AND the Revolution. I think implicit in all of these statements was that he didn't agree with my assessment that only one team could win, because he liked all of them. Or something like that.