Tag Archives: questions

PROMPT: Hated Question

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Daily writing prompt
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
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Being a traveler who lives abroad, the answer is simple: “Where are you from?”

As a traveler, I can’t grasp tribal / jingoistic people’s obsession with where one fell out of one’s mom, and it always feels a bit xenophobic — as though, noticing one’s foreignness, there is a rush to determine whether one is one of the tolerable foreigners or one of the really bad ones.

As an introvert, the question offends my preference to be talked to by people who have something to say, and to be left alone by people who are just playing out social programming with the objective of breaking silence that they find objectionable (but which I, as a rule, find delightful.) (Even being highly introverted, I can converse for hours with someone who has something to say on a topic that is neither themselves nor me — i.e. I love ideas but hate small talk and interaction for the sake of interaction.)

Plus, it just gets annoying being asked the same question sixty times a day when I’m in more remote parts — a question, the answer to which will be forgotten in three minutes and is merely sound for sound’s sake. In the unlikely event that one hopes to have an actual conversation with me, one must start with something that is not your culture’s default socially programmed question. One must get to at least the second most commonly asked question, a question varies from person to person (in my case, it’s: “Why are you such an asshole?”)

POEM: The Sum of All Ignorance

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Oh, take me on a learning spree.

Explain the nature of reality.

Am I living in a simulation?

Perhaps, dumb luck is the world’s foundation.

Does life have meaning, or must I make one?

Should I live for love, or live for fun?

Should I consecrate or desecrate?

Do I live by chance or live by fate?

The answers, they grow no nearer.

Am I the heard or the hearer?

&

If I received such a knowledge bearer,

would I awake in bliss or in terror?

DAILY PHOTO: How Many People Fit in an Auto-Rickshaw?

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Taken October 12, 2013 in Agra, India

Taken October 12, 2013 in Agra, India

It’s a question that has been debated since the dawn of the Tuk-tuk. Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie-Roll Tootsie-Pop, attempts to definitively answer the question have resulted only in controversy. The question?

HOW MANY PEOPLE FIT IN AN AUTORICKSHAW?

In the highfalutin cities, people think that nobody is supposed to ride upfront with the driver, but elsewhere they’ve figured out that you can put at least one man on either side of the driver (as long as the weight of each man is fairly evenly matched–there’s only one tiny front wheel after all.) How many one can fit in the back is influenced by the average yoga skill level of the riders and whether one has any Twister (TM) grand-champions on board. 

There are myths of tuk-tuks containing entire villages tooling down the back-roads. Theoretical physicists tell us that you can pack them in until their density forms a self-sustaining black-hole, and then everybody out to the event horizon is drawn in… ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.

The answer is: “a lot.”

 

There’s No Such Thing as a Silly Question? LIAR!

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I’m shocked by how easily a piece of “common wisdom” can become accepted despite being patently and demonstrably wrong. The best example may be, “There’s no such thing as a silly question.”

Oh, yeah:

“Do you wear spurs when you ride ostrich in the avian rodeo?”

“If you had to wear shoes made of cheese, of which cheese would you want them made?”

“Do you have purple-glazed doughnuts in honor of the St. Crispin’s Day unicycle rally?”

“May I twirl my way into an eternity of dandelion lunacy?”

I can do this all day.

Are you seriously going to tell me that none of the above questions is at least a little bit silly. As a person of silliness, it enrages me… well maybe not so much “enrages” as has no discernible effect… when people deny the potential for silliness. Folks, it’s all around us. So, the next time you say that there is no such thing as a silly question, my response is, “Do you really think you can make that stick like the Archbishop’s bugger to the side of an albino wino?”