Is it Rude to be Brutally Curious?

Did your parents raise you, telling you there is no such thing as a stupid or dumb question? Mine did. My parents always told me questions aren’t dumb or stupid if they’re honest or out of curiosity. Especially my mom, she always said to ask questions because curiosity is not a bad thing and it’s how people learn especially kids. Thing is, she forgot to teach me that sometimes you should wait to ask questions or sometimes you need to limit what you say to people sometimes. Even as our teachers occasionally told us, “honesty is the best policy”. So then why do kids get told not to ask certain questions? Or why are we told not to ask about certain things because society is progressively becoming too sensitive?

Growing up I was pretty quiet but was always full of questions. Well, I’m still always full of questions, but that’s beside the point. When I was little I had the basic family, a mom and a dad who had two kids. However, my sister was 10 years older than me which changed things up a little bit. When I was with her I’m always able to ask questions my parents may say are inappropriate or would get upset about. It’s still that way to this day.

When I was 10 years old my dad got into a very bad motorcycle accident that nearly left him entirely paralyzed for the rest of his life or even dead. He was supposed to be wheelchair bound but with time he’s relearned how to walk, make more complete conversations again and do some of the normal everyday things people do like drive and work part-time. However, when I was 10 my whole life got flipped around, I had never been incredibly close with my mom but was suddenly living alone with her as my sister was at college coming home as much as she could to help. In any serious scenario, I’m sure any parent would want to keep the horrible things away from their child. Being the busy woman my mom already was and now having to build a much stronger connection with her youngest child, my mom lets me on some of the things that were going on. I learned awful habits my dad had, things I never knew, I learned how much my mom really was doing all the time and about how many times my dad had been flipping through jobs unable to keep a steady one. Slowly but surely I went from being the stereotypical “Daddy’s Girl” to a “Mommy’s Girl”.I felt like I couldn’t trust him anymore. I really wanted to ask him “Why? Why did you leave on your motorcycle? Especially if you knew the roads weren’t clear to be totally safe? Why did you go so fast? Why did you have to be under the influence? Why did you have to be an alcoholic?”

Those were just my initial questions. Having grown up now with a man with a brain injury for most of my life I can’t really remember him before the accident, I knew there were good times and they were much more frequent, but “Where did all the good times and good memories go? Why are they so infrequent? Why couldn’t you have just said ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ and come inside to eat lunch with me like you promised.” As years go by some of my questions I’ve decided are stupid because there is no answer to them. They will never be answered and never be fixed and will always be a haunting me. As the years go by, my sister even fills me on some of the things I missed when I was much younger. On particularly bad days where I feel like I’ve been arguing with him for days on end, I sometimes ask myself, “Why didn’t mom just leave him? Why didn’t mom just want to make it easier on herself and I to just leave him?” My sister had already moved out and already dealt with my mildly difficult dad, however, she admits now after hearing some of the stupid arguments or stupid things he does that he has only gotten much worse since his accident. Sometimes I really want to ask my mom even on the ‘little to no argument’ days, “Why didn’t you leave him? Why not cut off the problems at the source?”

For a while now, I’ve known that I can’t ask these questions and I also cannot ask “Why do you teach your child to be honest and ask all the questions that come to her mind if you ask her to be silent or to not ask such things when she does ask them and is honest? Is it really that rude to be brutally curious?” I hope one day to find out the answer to some of these questions, but I know it won’t be a friendly road to walk down when I do.

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