Ask a silly question – get a silly answer.

Attila the Hun

Perhaps my expectations were all messed up. Perhaps my questions weren’t silly enough.

If I ask a silly question, is it really too much to ask to get a silly answer?

Did you ever steal my toes in a dream?

Which toe is your favourite?

Why is Tuesday Tuesday and not another day?

No matter how silly my question I didn’t get a silly answer.

I got ostracised and ignored. Doesn’t anyone follow the silly question rules?

Side note – I did once get Ostrich-eyed. The Ostrich did a mating dance in front of me. Ostracised..

I was pleased there was a fence.

With Social media and mobile phones, it’s easy to block or ignore online people.

In real life,it is much more difficult and much more amusing.

I continued to ask my silly questions at the real world-ers.

They continue to go blank faced,look straight ahead and pretend I’m not there.

 

Pretending

 

I always liked to pretend but I didn’t realise pretending continued all through adulthood.

Many of my childhood games seemed more sensible.

I enjoyed playing in the mud, scraping the edges of puddles with a stick to make bigger puddles.

Once I learnt to speak it was game on.

Do you eat tree bark?

Florence Nightingale

You’re still ignoring me

 

I have to say I am a bit slow. I don’t always realise I am being ignored.

You may think I’m following you deliberately.

But I usually think my questions aren’t silly enough.

Therefore I must try to be super silly to get my silly answer.

The funny thing is, it is impossible to try and ignore someone more.

Once you have your real life ignore move sorted – the blank face, the look ahead or the non blinking stare.

There’s only one more thing you can do.

 

Speed up your walk

 

What if I don’t realise ‘the ignore’ and I start walking in the same direction?

I’m a bit slow remember? But not for walking.

If evolution was real why don’t we have three hands?

 

After about twenty years of pursuing silly answers, I realised it didn’t mean that at all.

Like I said before, I’m a bit slow. I shall go back to the mud and my puddles.

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Tim Willows Additional Thoughts

Why not ask me a silly question?

I found myself reading the origin of the phrase – ask a silly question get a silly answer.

In the quote below from William Caxton – who enabled all the silly questions to spread like a virus.

This sounds like a fairly recently coined proverb and, in it’s precise wording, it is. Nevertheless, a medieval version with almost exactly the same sentiment written in Middle English pre-dates the modern version by a good 500 years. William Caxton expressed the notion in his retelling of Aesop’s Fables, 1484:

For to a folysshe demaunde behoueth a folysshe ansuere.

The modern translation had to wait until the 20th century, as in this example from the Minnesota newspaper The Brainerd Daily Dispatch, Tuesday, April, 1945:

If you want to ask a silly question and get a silly answer, just ask Mona Roth whom she refers to as El Dorado.