A Dumb Question?

I remember growing up as a kid I had many questions about virtually anything I had learned.  Sometimes even if I had understood what someone had told me or taught me I still had hundreds of questions about whatever topic it was on. Even now that I am older I still come across a time or two where I am questionable about something but unsure about how someone else would think. Like would they think I’m dumb or would they make fun of me? And I was always told by people that there was no such thing as a stupid question. But each time I asked it always felt kind of dumb of me to ask. Well, there is one time I remember growing up. I remember one specific time I had asked a question about cars and wanted to know how they run.

Around when I was 7 or so I started working on small engines and became fascinated by cars and always wondered what made them what they are. I would always be asking tons and tons of questions about virtually anything in the car but there were times when I would ask a question and think “That was kind of dumb” or ” I should have known that. But there was this one time when my dad was explaining to me when gas goes stale or goes bad that the engine won’t run. He also explains that if there is any water in the fuel it will not run. so, My question was how come cars can run on water? and at the time it seemed like a good idea because there is water everywhere. But in the back of my mind, the thought of it being a dumb question started to creep into my mind and I become to feel embarrassed and worried that someone would laugh at me The response I got was “Because water is not flammable.” It was at this time I realized that that was a really stupid question. I remember how it made me feel so embarrassed and I could feel my face get bright red and instantly felt stupid that I had asked that question. And I was kind of unsure of how to take it because I had never really asked a question and felt so dumb about it afterward. and during that moment I could hear people saying “There’s no such thing as a dumb question” but I felt like I had asked a really dumb question. Remembering that saying made me feel even more worried and foolish thinking I was the only one that ever asked a dumb question even for a while. I was afraid to ask any questions about anything just because I was afraid of others thinking it was dumb or stupid. Before that, I had never been afraid to ask a question because every question I would ask people thought it was a really good question.

But this was the first time where it felt like it was foolish of me to ask. and The person I had asked did not come out and say it was a bad question but I could tell that they thought it was funny that I would ask such a thing. Not long after I had asked that question I had tried my best not to ask dumb questions but it happened again. I was younger, maybe 5 or 6 but I was really interested in baseball and my favorite team was the New York Yankees. But I did not understand why the New York Yankees weren’t the team for New England. and my question was ” Why isn’t the New York Yankees the official team of New England, New York is more of a part of New England than Mass.” At the time I did not know my state very well so I thought New York was closer than Boston. I remember my mom saying “Boston is closer than New York” and showed me the map. And this was during a road trip so I had other family members in the car and they thought it was really funny. It made me super embarrassed because I truly thought differently and it made me super dumb the entire rest of the trip. And it made me afraid of saying something or asking a question because of the worry of being wrong or making myself look stupid.

“question” by Siyah Kedi Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.