Daaaad, why do you always say that cars have horsepower?

Well, son, you have that gerbil which is always running around in this wheel?
There is this big block under the hood of the car which is called engine. Hidden in this engine are wheels, just like the one your gerbil uses. These wheels are driven by tiny horses. When I say the car has fifty horsepower, it means that there are fifty of these wheels with fifty horses running around. Their power is used to make the car move. That's why a car can only have a certain horsepower, depending on how much room there is for these wheels. The bigger the car, the more room for wheels, the more horsepower.

My son was playing in the backyard as I was reading a book.

He is four years old now and full of curiosity.
I notice he has stopped chasing his ball and is staring skyward.

This can’t be good.

“Mommy!” He calls. “Why’s the sky blue?”
“Oh God help me”, I mumbled under my breath.

He didn’t go through this when he was in his terrible two’s like my other children did and I thought I had escaped it.

“The sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light sweetheart.” I yell to him.

He turns around and stares at me with a blank look on his face.

“Huh?”
“I said it’s because of molecules!”

“What?” He has dropped his ball and is walking towards me now.

"Darn, I thought that might work."

“Oh! Why is the sky blue?” I say as if this is the first time I have heard his question.

“Well, you see when the world was painted; there was only so much of each color.”

“Since God and the Angels did the painting from Heaven, they painting the earth first and used the darkest colors on the ground.”

“Green and brown for the grass and trees and the vibrant colors for the flowers and sunsets.”

“When it came time to paint the sky, they only had blue for the sky and white for the clouds.”

“Oh” He said, and went back to play.

"Mom, why do horses neigh?"

"That's a good question, Annie. It's a little known fact that horses actually used to rule the world. Their beauty and strength was rivaled only by their pride. Horses kept humans as pets, rather than the way it is today. Humans were kept in fenced-in pastures, left to graze and romp freely to the horses' enjoyment. Problem was, the horses were bored. The humans were too clumsy to do the kinds of things that horses wanted them to do, but none of the horses were willing to admit that their human wasn't the greatest one in the lot.

One day, a horse named Clyde decided he had enough. He went to his pet and told him that it was time for him to learn some tricks to impress the other horses. The human was very out of shape and portly, and could not keep up with Clyde. The horse was indifferent at first, but soon grew weary of his human's inability to keep up. He shook his mane in frustration and ordered his pet onto his back. Seeing the spectacle, the other humans followed suit -- throwing their bulky bodies onto the backs of the sleek animals. The horses were shocked and surprised; so surprised, in fact, that all they could do was protest, "NAY!" The humans liked being the dominant species, and remained on the backs of the horses throughout history.

And that, my dear, is why horses neigh."

Dad, why do people hiccup?

Well, about 5000 years ago, the world was very different. At the time, there were no cities, just forests with lots of trees. Also, everybody was either a cat or a mouse. Because mice taste so good, the cats would eat the mice. So that they wouldn't be wiped out off the face of the Earth, the mice learnt how to hiccup.

You see, hiccupping is a very clever way of escaping cats. When a mouse is approached by a hungry kitty, it automatically hiccups to get away from the cat in two ways. Firstly, a hiccup makes a loud noise which can frighten a scaredy-cat and leave them in a daze. Secondly, hiccupping actually creates a force to push something up. Because people are so much heavier than mice, we don't feel it. In a small mouse however, they actually get a few feet off the ground. This allows them to hiccup into the branches of a tree where a cat won't be able to get them and eat them for dinner.

Over thousands of years, some of the mice and cats have very slowly changed into humans. They have lost their whiskers, and their fur and their tails; but for some strange reason they decided to keep hiccupping because it may be useful in the future. Who knows? You might be attacked by a lion and would need to scare it away.

"Um, well, honey... You know that Sims game you're always playing? We're here because God likes the Sims too. One day God got tired of playing Sims on the computer and wanted to see what Sims would do in real life. So he made people. And that's why we're here."

"Mommy, what happens if I poke my bellybutton?"

"Nothing will happen if you poke it once, but if you keep poking it, all your air will come out and...you know what happens when you let the air out of a balloon? The same thing will happen to you. You'll fly around the room like that. Then you'll have to use a bicycle pump to put more air in. It's true! I know someone it happened to!"

Why is the grass green?

Well, um, actually, the grass only looks green when you stare at it. When no one looks at grass, it turns brown. That's because grass is really all the hair from lawn gnomes. See, lawn gnomes actually live under peoples' lawns, and they don't like people staring at their hair. But when it gets cold, they have to go to sleep for a long time. And then they can't change their hair color, so it's brown even when you look at it. Once it gets warmer though, they change back to green. And the reason people have lawn gnomes in their yard is because they dug them up and captured them and made them slaves.

"Why does Daddy look at naked ladies on the computer?"
"Ahh, because he wants to be a doctor one day so he needs to study the human body."

I just heard a child asking a question.
He asked "Why are trees covered in bark?".
The father looked into the air briefly and kneeled down to his son.
"That is actually a good question you are asking. And my father, your grandpa, told the reason to me when I was just about your age!"
The kid's blue eyes twinkled and he smiled with anxiety.
"One of our great-great grandfathers was a crocodile farmer, he used to take his crocodiles from the farm to the river to take a swim. But one night he walked to the river with his dog Sparky and it occurred to him that he forgot to take them back to the farm earlier that day. So while he was walking through the dry grass he saw his crocodiles standing vertically in the ground, trying to seek shelter for the sun.” The kid was speechless, He blinked and asked “So the bark is actually dry crocodile skin? Why do they call it bark?” The father looked up and said “Sparky made a funny noise while he saw the crocodiles, so he called it barking. Because he was tired he couldn’t think of anything else so he called it bark.” The father rose back into the air, gently grabbing his son’s hand and they walked away to the park exit.

Mommy, Why does daddy have such hairy hands?

Well son, daddy has hairy hands because, well when he was a little boy like you he did things to himself that the good lord tells us we shouldn't do. He made himself happy with those hands, and ended up getting happy all over himself. And so the happiness was like miracle grow and your daddy grew hair all over his hands. Thats why Daddy has hairy hands