HERE’S A TRITE TRUISM: There’s no such thing as a stupid question. They wouldn’t be asking if they didn’t want to know, and wanting to know is a good thing. That’s how we learn; that’s how we grow; that’s how we survive. As magnificent an instrument as is the human brain, we only use part of it, after all, and learning is an active, adventurous, two-way street that requires work, whether inside or outside the box. “I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew),” wrote Rudyard Kipling in 1902. “Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.” I guess whoever wrote the famous ‘Who’s on first?’ sketch for Abbott and Costello was digging deeper than we thought. Sometimes the answer to a question is predictably obvious: “Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth…?” or “Do you take this woman to be…?” Sometimes there are only two possible answers: “Do you want fries with that?” or “What is the jury’s verdict?” But it can get complicated. “How does it work?” or “Why would he say that?” or “What’s in it for me?” The catch, of course, is that the questioner then has to listen closely and critically to the response, since there is no guarantee that the person to whom the question is addressed knows the answer. So, here’s another question: is the answer true, false, or, as Mae West once described herself, “pure as the driven slush”?
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