I know why it rains. I know about evaporation, precipitation and weather patterns. Apparently, what is a bit harder is breaking those processes down into terms that are acceptable.
Q. What is rain?
A. When the sun shines on water, it turns into a gas and rises into the air to make clouds. The water droplets condense and become too heavy for the air and fall in the form of rain.
Q. What is rain?
That's when you know you've failed. At this point you can either repeat yourself, lie, or change the subject. I think I went back to singing 'The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish.'' That served as a decent distraction until I sang 'All Through the Night,' which prompted more questions about the cycles of day and night.
I tried explaining how the earth orbits the sun, and the moon orbits the earth - all of which is true, but hard to really grasp.
And this is just one kid. The other two haven't really started yet. They ask questions, but not with rapid-fire intensity of this one. But it's coming. I give it a month or so. And at that point I think I will have at least worked out the kinks.
Like, one time I thought I was being smart when I was asked, 'What's a skateboard?' I thought it would be a good idea to show him, but I had to sift through a bunch of YouTube videos about skateboarding that I very much didn't want him to see. I realized the most prevalent videos of any sport are the ones where someone is grievously injured there's educational and then there's just plain crazy.
Pre-screening is a good thing, but somewhat impossible when literally everything in the world now poses an in-depth question.
The game these days is to see who can actually arrive at a satisfactory answer the fastest without getting a repeat of the original question. It's only happened a couple of times, but it makes you feel wicked smart.