Questions My Five-Year-Old Asked Me Today

My son is home sick from school today with a cold, an ear infection, and suspected bronchitis. It's his fifth day being sick, and now that the antibiotic our doctor prescribed him is starting to kick in, his energy is returning and he is bored out of his skull. He's tired of TV, he's tired of books and yet he's still not quite well enough to play. So, desperate for conversation, he has been pelting me with questions without cease since his eyes opened this morning (My need to actually get some work done after five solid days of attempting to entertain him notwithstanding). And these aren't questions like "Where is my Slinky?" or "Can you play racecar rescue with me?" or "Do you think vanilla or chocolate ice cream is better?" Oh no. My kid doesn't let me off that easy.

Since I can't actually seem to manage to get the blog post I planned to write today written in between answering my kids' questions, here, in its place is an abridged list of the questions he has asked me so far today:

What are some things that bad bacteria do to hurt your body when you have an infection?

How do antibiotics help your immune system destroy bacteria?

Why is there momentum?

What do you mean "an outside force"?

What are the forces that make things stop moving?

What makes friction?

Why do light things fly through the air more easily than heavy things do?

How did Isaac Newton discover gravity again?

What is soy milk made of?

Where does chocolate come from?

Is the word cocoa related to the word cacao? Why are they different? Who named the chocolate tree?

Is spinach related to lettuce?

What number comes after a googol?

What is the last number anyone has ever come up with before infinity?

Why is there infinity?

How did people discover the idea of infinity?

What is at the end of forever and forever?

Why did people think the earth was flat thousands of years ago?

Why do people make up constellations?

If stars are moving and orbiting other stars and stuff all the time, why don't we notice the stars moving when we look up at them at night?

Did the Greek and Roman gods really exist?

Why do people make up stories about why things happen?

Why did people used to not use science to explain things?

What does geography mean?

What does geometry mean?

How is geometry related to geography?

And my favorite the question of the day:

What is a virgin?

(He was reading a book on astronomy. With constellations. Including Virgo the Virgin. THANKS SO MUCH, ancient astronomers, ancient religion-makers, and modern writers of children's astronomy books for providing me with the most interesting conversation of my day.)