All Out of Answers

This weekend, I figured out why I'm having trouble remembering things. It's not an age thing (or at least it's not just an age thing). It's the children - the shortest one in particular.

I can't remember my grocery list, or what colour carpet we need for our booth at the next trade show, or what products are in group 49, or where I left my keys, because all my RAM has been given over to remembering every single fricken' detail of every single movie the MonkeyChild has every seen. We spent over 2 hours in the car on Saturday, and he spent the entire time peppering me with questions like:

• Why did Jimmy's mom get mad at him for knocking the chimney off the roof? (Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius)
• Why did the sand people power R2D2? (Star Wars)
• How come Scooby Doo got put into the cyber space? (Scooby Doo and the something to do with computers - Grandma rented this one, so I didn't actually watch it but am still expected to know all the answers)
• Why did the robot blow up when he got into the water? (The Incredibles)
• What would happen if the sand people powered me and you and dad? (SW)
• Why did Randall want to steal Boo? (Monsters Inc.)
• Why did they tell Mr. Incredible to just kill the robot and not destroy it? (TI)
• Why wasn't Cindy wearing different underpants? (Jimmy Neutron, When Pants Attack)
• Why did Randall put Mike in that machine thing? (MI)
• Who was Luke again? (SW)
• Why did King Goobar steal Jimmy's parents and want to feed them to the giant chicken? And can you say the thing he said when Jimmy was tiny and then wasn't tiny again? (JN, BG)
• Why didn't Mr. Incredible put Syndrome's gloves in water so they'd blow up? (TI)
• Who was inside the tar monster? (Scooby Doo and the whatever)
• Why did Cindy's pants come off all by themselves? (JN, WPA)
  
• Why did Syndrome want to kill all the supers so no one was super but him? (TI)
• What's a virus? (Scooby Doo, I assumed)
• Why did Jimmy launch the toaster into space? (JN, BG)

Part of the challenge is that the questions come at random - you can't predict what you'll be hit with next. And each answer spawned new lines of questioning - an endlessly branching tree in which he leapt from branch to branch as lightly as a squirrel. I think the lad has a future in the intelligence community - he's utterly relentless, and frequently doubles back to try to catch you in a contradiction. I finally said my brain had run out of answers, that he'd have to wait a day to ask me any more questions. Fortunately, that sounded completely reasonable to him, and every time he started to pose another one, he'd stop and say "Oh, I forgot, your brain is empty."

I wish. I could do so much with all that free space ...