Just Answer the Question Please

I am under the illusion that I am relatively intelligent. But I will admit to you that I have questioned my brain power numerous times through the years. There are certain things I just don’t get. Things that seem obvious to most humans around me. Take, for example, analogous sayings intended to provide information to the listener without directly answering the question at hand. An example would be when I ask someone if it’s cold outside and they reply, “Does a cat have a climbing gear?” My roommate in college used to say that one (the cat climbing gear thing) all the time. I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know the answer. Yes, I realize cats can climb trees quite effectively. But do they really have climbing gears or is their ability related to their claws and hind legs? Perplexed, I simply walked outside and checked the weather for myself during my college days. Here’s another one I’ve never figured out. When someone says “I could care less” or “I couldn’t care less”. To me these statements are polar opposites but every time I hear either of them, they are intended to mean the same thing- the speaker doesn’t care. So I’ve accepted the fact both statements mean the same thing even though my brain can’t comprehend why. Ditto for “regardless” and “irregardless”. Somehow they are interchangeable. My English teachers taught me that irregardless is not a word but nowadays it’s appearing in a lot of dictionaries. I agree with my teachers. But I digress. Back to the “answering a question with a question” phenomenon. There’s even a set of commercials on television now with these types of “answering a question with a question” scenarios. “Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter “R”? “Does a 10 pound bag of flour make a big biscuit”? And so on. These types of questions are a crude form of something one might call Socratic Rhetoricals or dialectic syllogism as best as I can tell. This means a person is answering a question with another question whose answer is obvious. There’s probably other names for it but I’m sticking with Socratic Rhetoricals. My seventh grade algebra teacher’s favorite Socratic Rhetorical was, “Does a shark pee in the ocean?” This one was a no-brainer and caused me no confusion. Other ones I heard over the years included “Does a bear go to the bathroom in the woods?” and “Does a fat baby burp?” (I cleaned up both of those to keep them rated PG). I’m not done yet. I’ve also heard people say things like “Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?” and “Is the Pope Catholic?” I think I can figure those out though I remain mildly skeptical about the duck. It doesn’t exactly fit here but I heard a coach say something interesting when his team kept losing and people wondered why he couldn’t do something to help them win more. His reply: “You can coach an ant to death but he’ll never kick a rat’s butt.” He might have also added- “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Irregardless, Socratic Rhetoricals are here to stay even if they don’t make a whole lot of sense. And to be honest, I could care less.