My husband asks me random questions. He reads very widely. He has chosen questions as his preferred rhetorical method, I think, because he knows I'm a type-A, over-achieving, anxiety-addled teenager at heart. As soon as I hear the inflection in his voice, all the alarms go off in my head: competition! Quiz! Test! All brain cells engage!
He has three types:
The Open-Ended Answer
Why are boys diagnosed with ADHD more often than boys? Why do left-wing people generally support the IRA?
These are invitations to discussion on a topic. He likes to ask them over dinner. If he hits a topic I know anything about, he's stuk listening to me opine for a good twenty minutes.
The Needful Thing to Know
How many years is 10,000 days? Who are the gubernatorial candidates from California? How are judges chosen for the Supreme Court of Canada?
He asks me these because I might know, and it's easier than looking it up on Wikipedia. Sometimes he asks me _as_ he looks it up on Wikipedia. Sometimes he checks me with a calculator. This is a teensy bit insulting, as I hate to think for no reason.
The Trivial Pursuit
Name the poet who wrote these lines. Which sitcom character was a drummer for The Beach Boys?
He asks me these questions because . . . well . . . I have no idea. I'm face-blind and therefore cannot identify people in movies. I identify members of my own family by their hair. And I could not now name a single drummer for any band at any time. Was Ringo the drummer in the Beatles? I don't even know. I think that there's someone in Red Hot Chili Peppers might be named Flea. But that might be someone else in the band. And it's not really his name, I hope.
What my husband doesn't know (until he reads this) is that I keep track of how many of each type of question I miss and which I get right. Somehow, it turned out that the seventh grade imprinted on me, and has become the lens through which I see the entire remainder of my life.
Question time: from which Canadian political institution does this post take its title?
Parliament? Like the UK Parliament's Question Time when they ask questions of the PM?
ReplyDeleteI think it must be very complicated in your brain. 0_o
ReplyDeleteFlea is the bassist, and his real name is Michael Peter Balzary. The drummer's name is Chad Smith. Y'know, just in case hubby decides to ask again. ;)
ReplyDelete