Stupid Questions

All through school, I had teachers tell the class over and over again, "There are no stupid questions." Apparently those teachers were never around preschoolers. Or at least my preschoolers since I don't want to point fingers at every kid. One question I get at least 73 times a day is, "What are you doing?" Sometimes, this is a very logical question - like once a day. The other 72 times, it can certainly be classified as a stupid question. As much as I hate to use the word stupid, really, it is a stupid question. Like when I am going to the bathroom or cooking dinner or letting the dog outside and I hear, "What are you doing?" and we all know that the kid asking the question knows very well what I am doing.

We have tried out several tactics to answer this question over the past year since this question became so prominent. Sometimes we just answer. Sometimes we ask back, "What do you think I am doing?" This of course gets an answer that confirms that the kid asking the question most certainly knows what we are doing. Our favorite answer is to just make up some random thing. What are you doing? Shoeing a horse. What are you doing? Dancing the mambo. What are you doing? Camping in South America.

This has been going on long enough, apparently Marcus is picking up on the game. This morning I was sitting at the table eating breakfast with my kids. I had a mouthful of cereal as the thing I was doing at that moment was eating cereal. Will asked, "Mommy, what are you doing?" Before I had a chance to swallow and answer him with some ludicrous statement, Marcus blurted out without missing a beat (and sounding rather frustrated that Will did not immediately realize what I was up to), "She's cleaning a lion, Will."