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Just Saying…

April Questions

By Q.C. Jones

Your erstwhile friend and literary pal QC Jones has been thinking a lot lately. Perhaps questioning life, or maybe questioning the art of asking questions. Ever since I was a pollywog of a person, I have been famous for asking questions. My parents were kind and loving but came from the old-fashioned “Children were to be seen and not heard” school of thought.

They were mostly tolerant of my constant stream of questions as long as my questions didn’t interrupt adult conversations. In all kinds of situations, I listened to (or eavesdropped on) the adults talk and made mental notes on the questions I wanted to ask. Following the conversation, there I was, ready to ask my set of questions.

Some say there is no such thing as a dumb question. Apparently, those “experts” never heard the list of questions that flowed from young QC’s mouth. Here are a few examples of the questions I asked as a youngster:

• If the early bird gets the worm, what do the late birds eat and shouldn’t the worms stay in bed?
• Grandma said it was raining cats and dogs. Can I go out and look for puppies?
• Why don’t cookies count as vegetables? After all, there is no meat in them.
• Do dogs in Mexico bark in another language?
• In Sunday School we learned about Noah. Is he related to our neighbor Noah Smith?

As I got older, my questions got dumber. I once remember asking a college professor who was talking about William Shakespeare if he thought that Shakespeare was called Bill by his friends. It made sense at the time, but instead of just saying yes or no, this very learned lady gave me a very detailed response. I remember it went something like this:

“Back in the Middle Ages the English language was going through some dynamic changes. People today would have a hard time understanding the language. The English started to apply nicknames to old and hard-to-pronounce names. This led to the use of Will for Willam. Constant switching became a thing as some were easier to pronounce than others. Voila. Will became Bill. So, it was more likely Mr. Shakespeare was referred to as Will rather than Bill.”

Thinking back on the experience, this highly informed answer to a dumb question may have been a trigger point in my life. Dumb questions rock and…. Dumb questions are my super-power.

Moving forward in life, I applied the dumb question practice both personally and professionally. As a shy narcissist trapped in an extrovert’s body, I struggle with idle chit-chat. As a younger businessperson, I struggled in the idle chit-chat department. I learned to fake it with many social interactions; you know,  the basic stuff like “how are you doing” today followed by an appropriate wise crack. The weather, sports, and other throwaway topics filled in nicely as well. The only problem is after about 30 seconds the shy inner-QC ran out of dialog. That’s where my super-power kicked in.

Ask a person a dumb question and they are likely to take the conversation down some interesting and divergent paths. I discovered that dumb questions often uncovered great business opportunities and sometimes interesting facts about the people I met along the way. Even more awesome was the fact dumb questions, asked properly, often convince the person you are engaged with you are an unbridled intellectual powerhouse. And who am I to disagree with them.

Over the years, many of the topics of my business writing have danced a merry jig around the topic of questions. Struggling to fight my natural modest nature, one might say I have an advanced degree in the art and science of dumb questions. This takes us to the archenemy of any purveyor of dumb questions – the dumb answer.

Dumb answers are everywhere. Here’s an example from my life. Whether at some highfalutin’ cocktail reception or down at the neighborhood saloon, it’s not unusual to hear someone ask a new acquaintance what they do for a living. The answer mostly comes in a mentally rehearsed set of words, what business experts call an “elevator pitch.”  These elevator pitches are designed to make the answer sound important and socially respectable. Here’s QC Jones’ personal elevator pitch:

“I am an ace correspondent and featured columnist for one of the QCA’s best-read monthly publications. I provide morally uplifting and sometimes humorous outlooks on life in the Quad Cities, the Mid-West, and Middle America in general. Some call me the QCA’s answer to Studs Terkel, and I will soon release a book called John Wayne, Davy Crockett, and Me.”

Hearing this, most people aren’t that impressed.

Instead of asking “What do you do for a living?”… why not present a dumb question like,  “What do you love most about your life’s work?” My answer is simple, I just love writing the following four words:

Just saying… QC Jones