by Thomas M. Pender
 
I don’t believe in rhetorical questions. Any question can be answered, or at least attempted. It’s a great deal of fun, in fact, to shoot out an answer to a question when you know the asker did not expect to get one. One of my favorites growing up was “You know what I don’t get?” In this circumstance, the speaker means this phrase as a preamble to what he is about to say next. Unless they have been in my company when they have asked it previously, I’m sure very few people expect or receive any assistance with this poser. I like to take a stab at answering the question, though, since the question itself is an invitation to join in.
 
When someone says “You know what I don’t get?” my usual response is “Fractions?” This is typically answered with a catch in the speaker’s throat at the unexpected interruption, a blink as the speaker processes what I said, why I said it, and how to proceed, and then either a half-smile or a half-scowl (depending on the speaker), and a continuance of their pontification, as though I had said nothing at all.
 
Rude, really. I am always curious if I got at least in the neighborhood of what the speaker doesn’t get!
 
At the same time I enjoy attempting to answer the unanswerable (or at least, the uninvited!), I also enjoy reading, hearing, and dreaming up “imponderables”: “Questions” that were never meant to be answered, but were invented as a form of entertainment, simply by the asking. As I recall, my first encounter with an imponderable was with my grandfather.
 
Claude McKinnon – our “Grandpa Mac” – was a wise, loving, and silly man. He was a Boy Scout leader for a great deal of his adult life, a Sunday School teacher, a carver of Ivory soap bars (his favorite creations were open Bibles and praying hands), a player of the ukulele and the saw, and a lifelong child-at-heart. He once asked me, “How long does it take a grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?” I was probably all of 10 at the time. Disguised as a math problem, I could tell from his vocal and facial expressions that the question itself was the answer. It was a source of entertainment, not an introduction to mental exercise.
 
When I was in college, I came across a book someone had compiled by writing down the graffiti found on the buildings of all of the Big Ten colleges, including my beloved Michigan State. Chapters were categorized by topic, with titles such as “Life,” “Sex,” and “Campus Life,” but the last chapter was the best, as it was dedicated to the unanswerable. Statements and questions that were mentally indigestible. Of these, a few have stayed with me:
 
How can a brown cow eat green grass and give white milk?
 
Where does the white go when the snow melts?
 
and
 
What’s the difference between a duck?
 
If only I could have majored in this subject, whatever it might be called, I could have had a perfect grade-point average and a Bachelor’s degree, probably within two years! This is the stuff my brain feels comfortable thinking about, due in large part to my parents’ and grandparents’ love of fun and silliness.
 
Imponderables don’t even need to be in question form. Once, a co-worker of mine said, “Tell me something I don’t know, Tom” (another obvious question preamble), and he paused just long enough for me to take that as an invitation. I answered, “All right. The width of modern train tracks is based on the width of ancient chariot wheels, as dictated by Julius Caesar.” This co-worker was enough of a fun-loving thinker that he actually diverted from his original train of thought (pardon the pun) to work that factoid out. He worked backwards, understanding that train tracks were mainly built on popular wagon routes. The wagon was introduced into America by immigrants, largely from Europe. Centuries ago, the whole of Europe was greatly influenced by Caesarian practices. Therefore, it was conceivable that the distance between wheels that Caesar insisted upon for his chariots would have been followed as tradition by cart makers, who then came to America, and influenced the measurements of the first train tracks. Like me when faced with a poser, he received a good deal of joy figuring that one out.
 
Whether it’s for fun (as it usually is!) or intellectual exercise, I get not only a good amount of enjoyment attempting to answer all questions put to me, but it can on occasion lead to education and inspiration! Readers of Douglas Adams’ popular science fiction book series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will recognize that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is the rather shocking “42”! Also, the fact that the Ultimate Question itself is now unknown gives readers an even more intense need to scratch their hairlines. How can that not be fun?