Ask your kids stupid questions

When I was six years old or so, I started pulling the toilet paper to the closed bathroom door to ensure I had enough. That was about six feet. Sometimes, on a special day, if no one was around upstairs, I would open the bathroom door and pull the toilet paper all the way to the linen closet. That was probably another 12 feet.

My dad spent a lot of time unclogging the toilet in the kids’ bathroom (and keep in mind, this was the ’70s, when every flush used 40,000 gallons and caused the extinction of a never-discovered Amazonian species).

Now, it’s hard to ask stupid questions, and I don’t mean any potential awkwardness it causes. I mean it’s difficult, as in it’s challenging to channel your brain to ask questions that rational adults don’t ask. Because who opens the bathroom door and pulls the toilet paper down the hall before tearing it off?

Ah, but see, that’s the wrong way to approach it. You have to work backwards and consider all contingencies. This toilet is clogging a lot. Is my son putting something in the toilet that doesn’t go in the toilet? (See, Dad did ask that. I answered, truthfully, “no.” And I think that was the end of the inquiry. How could he possibly know the illuminating question was “Bo, are you using nearly 20 feet of toilet paper to wipe yourself?”)

I wonder what happened in my children’s younger years that had a simple, but difficult-to-think-of, explanation? I’ll let you know if anything pops up.

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