Sunday, February 20, 2011

Where do answers come from?

There pretty much isn't a single day that I'm not grateful for the internet. It's one of those things that I'm not exactly sure how life existed before it's creation. I rank it right up there with indoor plumbing, cars, and cappuccinos.

Parenting must have been much harder without the internet. How did parents do it? How did they answer the incessant flow of questions from their children?

Yes, there's the quintessential question about why the sky is blue, but that's amateur compared to the questions that I've been expected to answer lately.

Mom, why are they called marshmallows?
Mom, how did the Liberty Bell crack?
Mom, how long do goldfish live?
Mom, what does a platypus eat?
Mom, what is root beer made out of?
Mom, how many girl Transformers are there?
Mom, when did they first make Hot Wheels?
Mom, when did leap year start?
Mom, who first grew cherries?

Before the internet, my only option would have been the old standby plan of make something up and hope they never find out. But now, I can slip away, look it up and come back fully informed. Now, with the assistance of Google, I can keep up my image of the smartest mom ever.

I'm not looking forward to the time when the questions get a bit harder.

Where do babies come from?
Why doesn't she like me?
What were you and Dad doing?
What should I do when I grow up?
Can I borrow the car?

Despite my love of the internet, I'm not sure there is any search engine that will be able to help me then.

8 comments:

  1. I love to use the internet for answering the boys questions. Some times I will tell them, I don't know lets go look it up on the computer.

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  2. Like you, I can not imagine what I did before the internet to answer all kinds of questions or to gather simple information. I definitely couldn't live without it now.

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  3. I think back to all the researching techniques and things they used to teach us back in school. Doing elementary school reports and pouring over the encyclopedias in the library. I am glad those days are over! The internet has made learning everything easier. It is a double edged sword though. With all the good things we have access to there are also a billion bad things we now have to shelter our kids from on the internet. But I would not go back to life before learning at my fingertips. So much easier to be a smart mom when google is around!

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  4. It's your fault for raising such smart kids. ;-)

    I love having a smart phone because now I can pretend to be sending a text message while secretly doing a Google search to answer some of those unanswerable questions.

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  5. Oh I hear ya! I never thought I would say, "just because", let alone 453 times a day. But I do have a new love for google.

    Stopping by from SITS!

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  6. Oh I am dreading those last set of questions. Hopefully the internet has answers for them when the time comes!

    ...stopping by from SITS...

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  7. I'm exhausted after reading this! I think that my stock answer to any and all questions is, "Go ask your father."

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  8. Nope. But it will be fun.

    LisaDay

    And by the way, how many girl transformers are there?

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