Teaching my son everything he needs to know....on the way to football practice

I am blessed with three sons. My oldest is an inquisitive sort, which I -usually- greatly encourage. I have honed his manners enough that his questions are no longer of the "Why is that man bald?" and "how come that lady is so fat?" variety. I have told him that any time he asks me an intelligent question, I will answer to the best of my ability. I have become quite good, if I do say so myself, at explaining difficult things at eight-year-old level.

Now, five days a week, OldestSon and I make the 1/4 mile 10 minute drive to football practice. Some days we take the scenic drive by the river, othre times it's through the center of town, hitting every red light along the way. And of course, my town thought it good planning to stick a red light every 20 feet through our busy 'downtown' section. (Downtown consists of 4 blocks and about a dozen businesses.)

We pass a small family-owned pizza chain that shut down recently. Dear OldestSon asks why it closed. Cue a brief but informative talk about Huge Corporations versus Small Family-Owned Business. Somehow, in that short drive, I got through to him. My son now hates WalMart. :-p

On the way home, I was telling him to take a quick shower once we got home, because MiddleSon would need one too, and we still had spelling words to do before bedtime. Cue an 8 minute explanation of water heaters. (In kidspeak, a hot water heater is like keeping a pot of boiling water on the stove. If you use it all, you can fill it back up, but it needs time to heat up again).

Sitting at home last night after the kids were in bed, it dawned on me that since football started in late July, OldestSon and I have had some interesting, intelligent and certainly diversified conversations.

Abraham Lincoln, slavery, a brief history of the civil war (this came up because he wanted to know why Lincoln was important enough to get on a coin *and* a bill)

The war in Iraq, the WTC attacks (because, sadly, we lost some young men in our town over there, and he was curious about the new memorial)

Hybrid cars, electric cars, the (ridiculous) price of gas

Why riverfront property costs more, real estate costs in general (Why is anyone homeless? he asks, When there are all these houses?)

Sadly, my own education seems to be lacking, because there have been quite a few questions I actually had to go home and google so I could answer them. The most recent example was: what animal does pepperoni come from. Huh. Um.....pig? Maybe? (P.S. after reading exactly what pepperoni is, I am seriously considering plain cheese pizza from now on)

I feel good, somehow, knowing my son is learning things he wouldn't otherwise. I feel better knowing that it is me he chooses to ask. And I feel best when i hear him explaining it to someone else.

However, I am still dodging the question about where babies come from.