Silly Questions

When I was very young,

I learned that people would ask silly questions.

I was less than 4 years old, not very long after learning how to speak and think in Chinese, my family members started to ask me all kinds of silly questions; one of them is so silly that I thought about it seriously day after day.

"Will you get married when you grow up?"

Who would ask a young kid this kind of silly question? My family did. They're Chinese, you know, and Chinese people usually are obsessed about marriage and relationship. As a child, I thought about it for several days, and checked people around me who've been married then. I finally understood that people asked this out of another even sillier question.

"Will you have kids when you grow up?"

That's so absurd that I almost couldn't bear it. I was just a little girl who even hadn't finished kindergarten, why chasing me around asking me whether I'd love to have kids or not?

One noble day, I, a little girl who worked and played hard on kindergarten degree, after all these serious thinking, solemnly declared to all my family members, "I WILL NOT GET MARRIED WHEN I GROW UP, EVERYONE." I thought this declaration was noble, and my voice was sincere and clear. So, I kept standing there, waiting for the adults to react properly, like it was really something; something big.

They stopped every movement, watching me. After two to three seconds of silence, they all suddenly bursted into laugh. They laughed so hard that some of them started to wipe their tears. I kept standing there and felt puzzled. After that good laugh, some of them spoke, "Oh, how cute!" "Oh, so funny!" "Where did you learn these words?"

Now you see, I was serious then, no joking.

People would ask silly questions.
People would take your serious reply as a joke.
People tell you that you're so cute when you're so serious.
Chinese people ask a kindergarten girl if she'll get married or have kids!

Well, so next time, they got another not-so-silly question for me.

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

For people who never understand the nobility of a child's words, you better tell them something to shut them up. "A president." This time, nobody laughed. Ha ha!