Google with Feelings

Why is the sky blue? What kind of car is that? Why do they look the same? Why can’t we live next to the school? Why do I have to do homework every day? What’s for dinner? Where are my shoes?

The needle keeps scratching the same sentence. Only the needle isn’t scratching a vinyl record. It’s digging straight into my rib cage.

I didn’t sign up to be Google with feelings. But here I am, every single day, serving as the sole search engine for a tiny, relentless human being who treats my patience like a trial subscription that’s about to expire.

“Why do I have to wake up early? Why do I have to go to bed early? Why do I have to shower? Why do I have to go to school?”

He hits me with the heavy stuff before I’ve even finished my first cup of coffee. The morning routine is less of a schedule and more of a hostage negotiation. Shoes go missing. Time slips away like a rogue sock behind the washing machine. And then comes the grand finale:

“I just want to grow up, get a wife, and move into my own house—because then I don’t have to listen to you anymore, and I don’t have to go to school.”

I look at him, standing there in mismatched socks, holding a backpack that’s almost as big as he is, planning his grand exit from parental authority. He thinks adulthood is an endless vacation of staying up late, eating whatever he wants, and never touching a broom.

He doesn’t know about taxes yet.

He asks questions because he genuinely wants to know how the world works, and sometimes he asks questions just to watch my eye twitch. He knows it drives me insane. It’s a superpower, really. A tiny, weaponized curiosity designed to test my exact limit.

How does a TV work? Why is my phone “too small”?

Trying to explain internal digital storage to a kid who thinks “memory” means the screen size is a special kind of mental gymnastics. The phone’s brain capacity just isn’t enough, kiddo. Join the club. My brain capacity is running on a low-battery warning by 4:00 PM.

Then there was the teacher mystery.

“Where does my teacher sleep at night? She doesn’t have a bed in class.”

I explained that she has a home. A family. That she doesn’t actually spend her entire life trapped inside Room 4B. But my word wasn’t enough. He needed visual confirmation. He even wanted to drive past the school one evening, just to make sure nobody was sleeping on the carpet next to the bookshelf. Proof. He needed absolute proof.

And then came the after-school saga.

“Why don’t I go to the after-care program with my friends?”

That required a whole new level of delicate adult diplomacy. I had to rephrase “some moms and dads work all day” so it didn’t sound like a judgment, just a reality. I explained that because we both work from home, he gets to come straight home after the final bell. It took some convincing—and a little help from the television—for him to realize that staying home in his own living room was actually the premium option.

Curiosity is a strange beast. We tell kids to ask questions, to explore, to wonder. But what we really mean is: Ask questions that are easy to answer, and please stop asking them while I’m trying to cook dinner.

He is still learning the mechanics of existing. Where do birds sleep? Why is the pigeon on the roof instead of in the tree? Why is it cold today? Why is it hot?

And the daily battleground: Why do I have to eat?

It’s an endless struggle against things that seem completely obvious to adults. Why do I have to pick up my toys?

He asked that one right up until the moment he tripped over a plastic fire truck and bumped his head. The universe delivered the answer before I even had to open my mouth. Suddenly, the “why” made sense. Pain is a very effective teacher.

Being curious isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s where the good stuff lives. I only started reading books because I used to watch my friend with her nose constantly buried in a novel. I remember thinking, Why is this so much fun for her? I want to try it too. I picked up a book, and that was it. I couldn’t get enough. Curiosity opened a door I didn’t even know was there.

Curiosity didn’t kill the cat. If it did, at least the cat died knowing.

Besides, curiosity made the cat smarter. It learned things. It saw things. Personally, I think cats can actually speak fluent English—they just stay quiet because they don’t want to get a job or pay taxes. And honestly? I respect the strategy.

Without curiosity, life is just a grey waiting room. We need it to learn, to grow, to get better at whatever it is we’re trying to build. How boring would the world be if nobody wondered what was over the next hill, or how the stars stayed up, or why the pigeon chose the corrugated iron roof over the oak tree?

But there’s a line. A fine, invisible boundary between being curious and being too curious.

At some point, we all have to develop that tiny internal voice—the filter that taps us on the shoulder and whispers, Maybe don’t ask that. Maybe don’t intrude. Step back. There are borders we aren’t meant to cross, private spaces that belong to other people, and truths that aren’t ours to dig up.

Learning where that boundary sits is what keeps us out of trouble. It’s what stops the cat from getting killed in the first place.

Now, the house is finally quiet. The relentless interrogation has paused for now.

I walk past his bedroom door and peek inside. The little boy who spent all day demanding to know why he has to sleep, why he has to eat, and when he can finally move out to get a wife is glued to some cartoon with pooping sounds. Typical, ordinary boy. His shoes—the ones we searched for during twenty frantic minutes this morning—are kicked under the rug.

Tomorrow morning, the alarm will ring. The coffee will brew. And the search engine will boot back up.

“Why is the sky blue?” he’ll ask.

And even though the needle will start scratching that same familiar place in my ribs, I’ll take a breath, look at him, and start explaining.

Because maybe that’s the point. We ask until we know. And then we keep asking anyway.