“I want to know the answers to the questions that don’t exist yet,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“I want to know the answers to the questions that have never been asked yet.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “How can you know the answer if there is no question? Thats like having butter without the cow.”

“No, its more like knowing how the universe works. Just imagine if you could know the answer to any question someone might ever ask, before they asked it of you.” I think the philosophy was starting to climb above her level of appreciation, but I hoped she’d try to see it.

“Think about it. Knowing the question doesn’t mean a lot. The question always leads to an answer. Once you know the question, you’ve already started pointing to an answer, whether you know it yet or not. But an answer is different. If you know the answer but don’t know the question, how do you get to that answer?

“I mean, consider a big number. For giggles, lets choose 7,002,103,302. Thats our answer. Whats the question that gets us that answer? Is the question based on arithmetic? Could we be adding or multiplying or even dividing numbers together to get that answer? Or maybe its the exact population of humans on Earth at a specific point in time. We don’t know the question, but we know the answer.”

She sighed, gave me one of those looks. “Okay, but whats the use of knowing the answer if we don’t have the question first? Seems kind of pointless to me. Theres no reason to it.”

“Whats the meaning of life?” I asked.

“Oh please. Don’t start on that. Humans have been asking that question since the dawn of time and the answer to it is always subjective. There is no answer to that question.”

“But if I knew the answer to all the unasked questions, next time someone asked a similar question, I could answer them. I could be the next Mohommad or the next Buddha.”

She laughed and with a glint in her eye said, “Well you definitely have the girth for it. And you probably could spend all those years sitting under the tree without dying.”

I quickly leaned over and started tickling her around her waist. I was always the only one that was ever able to tickle her. She burst out laughing and half-heartedly started trying to fend me off.

“No! Please! Uncle! Okay, you’re not a Buddha. Stop!” but it was lost in the laughter. I stopped tickling her, my hands still resting on her waist as I leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips.

“Maybe, but I still want to know the answers.”