Ask and ye shall receive...no answers

I drove my parents crazy with questions when I was a kid. Now that I’m a lot older the questions drive ME crazy.

So much of life remains a mystery as you enter your twilight years. For example, why do we put peanut butter ahead of jelly in the sandwich of the same name? Each ingredient takes up the same amount of space on the bread, and jelly even comes first in the alphabet. Yet it’s always PB and then J.

It's PB & J -- got it?

How did this happen? Did Skippy beat out Smucker’s for naming rights?

Makes me wonder.

Then there’s this one: How can ants carry things bigger than they are in their mouths without tipping over? Do they ever pull their backs out hauling those things back to the ant colony? And how do they know what they’re lugging around will fit in the hole?

Surely science could provide an answer, instead of spending all that time digging up bones of dead stuff. Those bones aren’t going anywhere, anyway.

I’m also puzzled by those signs at construction sites that say, “Clean fill dirt wanted.” I have to ask, can dirt ever really be clean if we’re always so anxious to wash it off? And what turns “clean” fill dirt “dirty”?

I keep scratching my head.

Write it down: You'll lose the pen

Ballpoint pens present several questions for which I continue searching for answers. Why does ink move only toward the bottom of the pen and never toward the top? Better yet, how does it move at all? Ink is thick and heavy with greater viscosity than fudge. Is it gravity alone? A special chemical agent in the ink? Microscopic people pushing the ink toward the tip on tiny bulldozers?

And perhaps the most perplexing ink pen question of all: Why is it that the moment you become attached to a pen it immediately is lost forever?

I could go on and on:

* Why do lottery winners always show up at the check presentation news conferences in old T-shirts, jeans and ball caps? They certainly can’t say they couldn’t afford to go shopping for new clothes.

* Do opera fans in Italy feel cheated that they don’t get to hear singing in a language they don’t understand?

* How come M&Ms melt in your mouth but never when baked into cookies?

Grover "Don't Call Me Steve" Cleveland

* What was it about his first name of Stephen that Grover Cleveland didn’t like? It would have been cool to have had a president named Steve.

* If the Kentucky Derby only lasts two minutes why does the pre-race show on TV last two hours?

* Can’t restaurants come up with a better napkin dispenser than the traditional metal ones? You wind up either with a torn off piece of one napkin, or a handful of 15.

* Are cat’s lives really so exhausting that they need to sleep 18 hours a day?

* Why can women wear capri pants and be considered fashionable, but if men wear pants too short they’re laughed at for wearing “floodwaters”?

Does anyone know the answers? Or do I have to ask another question: Where’s the Shell answer man when you need him?