In the grand, chaotic theater of parenthood—particularly the boy-mom variety—one becomes accustomed to questions that arrive like uninvited guests at a marathon runner’s post-race buffet: sudden, breathless, and utterly baffling. I was lacing up my running shoes the other day, pondering the simple poetry of pounding pavement, when my youngest burst in, eyes wide as a startled deer’s: “Mom, are scorpion lollipops a good source of protein?” I blinked, mid-stretch, and managed, “You don’t even know what protein is,” at which point he bolted from the room, joyous and carefree as a kid who’s just discovered the turbo boost on life to ask Alexa the same question.

So much of my existence now orbits these interstellar queries, the kind that make a sensible adult pause, much like catching your breath after a grueling hill sprint. To prove the point, consider the interrogations lobbed my way this week alone: Why did the butt go to the doctor? (Presumably for a check-up on its cheeky disposition.) Are the clouds made of cotton candy or just water? (A meteorological dessert, I assured him, but only on Tuesdays.) If I read for eight hours straight, will I turn into an old man? (Only if you skip leg day, I countered.) How many socks do you reckon I can cram onto my head? (Enough to start a laundromat uprising.) What if I skateboarded right over the pizza? (It’d be a supreme topping redistribution exercise.)

I could rattle on—these volleys are endless, like miles unspooling beneath a runner’s steady stride—but I’d spare you the exasperation, that familiar parental cocktail of whimsy and weariness. Part of me adores the sheer, untethered invention of it all, the way their minds gallop free like colts in an open field. Another part yearns to explode, a pressure buildup worthy of a marathoner’s final kick, undone by the gleeful absence of logic. Yet it’s the essence of raising boys: embracing the absurd, answering the unanswerable with a dash of nonsense. It’s rather fun, in truth, concocting replies on the fly—like telling them axolotls only whisper secrets to their mothers. That one circled back to bite me square in the posterior (not the doctor-visiting variety, mind you) when I overheard my son solemnly informing his brother of this “fact,” igniting World War IV in the living room, complete with flying cushions and tactical shrieks.

Therein lies the rub, or perhaps the blister after a long run: these fanciful fictions foster delight but demand vigilance. Still, in the panting aftermath of such skirmishes, I find myself grinning. Parenting boys is less a straight-line race than a trail run—full of unexpected switchbacks, mud puddles of madness, and the occasional scorpion-lollipop curveball that leaves you fitter, faster, and forever questioning your own grip on reality.