WHY IS THE SKY BLUE? SERIOUSLY?

My kids have started asking me questions that are making me feel really stupid lately.  Yes, like “Why is the sky blue?”  My answer to that was “Seriously?  Are you really asking me that question?”  Okay, so maybe that was my way of avoiding having to come up with a real answer, but don’t most kids ask things like that when they’re 3 or 4?  My kids are 9.

Here’s another one:  “Where do tape worms live?”  Answer:  “Um, in people’s bodies.”  “But where do they live before they get in your body?  And how do they get in there?”  Breathe, breathe…  “So what did you do at camp today, honey?”

And then there are the “What if…?” questions.  These are really fun because there are no real answers to them!  For example, “What if someone built a house that was a mile long and 9 stories high?”  “Well, they’d have a really, really big house.”  (I mean, how else would you answer this question?)  Or “What if that pole (one of those cell towers disguised as a flag pole) fell down?”  “I suppose we could hope that it wouldn’t fall on anyone and hurt people.”  “Oh, that would be so cool, Mom!”  Yes, of course, I just made that scenario even more awesome for them because it could possibly involve blood!

When I was a kid and I asked my parents a question they couldn’t answer, they told me to look it up in the encyclopedia (the real set of books).  Now, I have started telling my kids to Google it, or look it up on Wikipedia.  Same thing, and even more updated.  Either way, we tell them this to give our kids the impression that we want them to learn it on their own, but really, we just don’t want them to know how little we know, right?  Right?

Karen