Questions, Questions

My older brother asks some pretty dumb questions sometimes. Some of them are just weird ("Do you think mermaids have to wait an hour after eating before they can swim?") And some of them are just stupid ("So is it butter with the brand name 'I Can't Believe It's Not' or is it really something besides butter, and they couldn't think of a name?") And I think the main problem is that he doesn't think stuff through before he asks a question. Like the time we were at a restaurant and he asked why the salad bar had "local" ranch. And I had to explain to him that he was misreading the abbreviation they were using for the "Low Calorie" ranch dressing.

So what I'm wondering is at what point in life did he stop thinking stuff through before asking a question. Because my three-year old son asks questions all the time, and you can tell he's really thought them through. Because he never asks a dumb question. Just last week, we were cleaning up in his room and he asked me, "Can we just do this later? I want to play cars downstairs." And I didn't have a good reason to tell him no. I felt like he was suddenly my peer and we were discussing our plans for the afternoon. And it was actually a pretty reasonable request and playing cars downstairs seems like a great reason to stop cleaning.

But what worries me about that is that if I'm stumped on the why-do-we-have-to-do-this line of questioning, I'm really gonna be in trouble when he asks some serious questions. I'm gonna be ill-prepared for the "Where do babies come from?" and the "What is murder?" and "Why don't we have more channels on our TV?" I figure I'll just always have the same response: "Good question... go ask Mommy. And let me know what she says."

And why don't we have more channels on our TV?