Looking for answers to some of life’s perplexing questions

By Bruce Stambaugh

From little on up, I have always been an inquisitive person.

One of the neighbor ladies from my suburban rustbelt neighborhood where I grew up must have noticed it. She called me “The Beacon Journal,” in honor of her favorite daily newspaper I presumed.

Seems I was always asking questions. If something happened in the neighborhood, I had to know all the assorted details, whether they were any of my business or not. They usually weren’t.

That inquisitiveness probably had a lot to do with my decision to major in journalism in college. Enjoying writing helped, too.

I still have the same inquiring mind today. The need to know is paramount from my perspective.

No matter what I’m doing, I seem to always be thinking of questions. Oftentimes they are totally unrelated to what I’m doing, which should come as no surprise either.

That mental process happens a lot when I’m on long trips, whether flying or driving. A big rig passes me and I wonder what the trucker is hauling. I see a jet cruise overhead and I wonder what were its points of departure and destination.

I ponder both the ludicrous and the serious stuff of life. In fact, I think about questions so much I started a list. I figured if I shared them with you I just might get some answers.

In no particular order, here are some of the significant questions conjured by my motivated mind.

• Once you pull those folded up canvas chairs out of their covers, does anyone ever put the chairs back in the covers again?

• How is it that you can put four pairs of socks in the laundry and when you retrieve the wash from the dryer you have nine socks and only six match?

• How far back should you stay from a car with the vanity plates H1N1?

• How many chocolate covered raisin clusters equal a serving of fruit?

• Why does it feel colder when it is raining and 36 degrees than it does when it is snowing and 26 degrees?

• Why do referees at high school basketball games wear jackets during the pregame warm-up when the gym is already stifling?

• Why don’t men know how to replace an empty toilet paper holder?

• Why is it that when you are driving with the windshield wipers going and they streak, the streak is always at eye level?

• Why do most people use the top plug in an electrical receptacle first, which blocks the use of the bottom plug?

• Do fish sleep?

• Why is the Big Ten Conference called that when it has 11 schools in its league?

• How can there be such a thing as “live video?”

• Even when they can see the road is inundated, why do drivers daringly head right into flooded roadways, often to be stranded and eventually rescued?

• Why did the Cleveland Indians trade Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn?

• Why do rocks that are naturally imbedded in soil find their way to the surface while rocks that you set in flowerbeds gradually sink?

I suppose I could have Googled for the answers to these pressing questions. But I’d rather hear from you. I look forward to seeing your answers, I think.