Answering Machine

The daily duties of a mother include responding to an infinite battery of questions and petitions. Starting with the usual why's and how's, questions in my house quickly snowball into the realm of strange, curious, and sometimes unexplainable.
My boys ask me to name characters and objects from the many fantasy worlds they subscribe to-- like spiderman's villain enemy pictured here or Ironman's compadre represented by this plastic figurine or trivial Star Wars characters they've heard mentioned somewhere along the way. These are things I don't know or care anything about, so I try desperately to avoid questions like "What's this guy's name?" or "What does this ship/weapon/robot/machine/mythical-creature do?".
"I don't know" is never acceptable, so my answers are always one of two:
"Ask your dad"
Or
I make something up.
Complete fabrication can go over amazingly well, but it can also catastrophically backfire, resulting in frustrated boys who lose a little faith in their old mum. I wish they would lose any and every trace of faith in me that I am knowledgeable in the span of subjects between scientific phenomena and Batman lore; because I'm not, I don't pretend that I am (aside from the occasional resort to fabrication), and I don't intend ever to be.
"Mama, do you know what gooey, stinky, sand is?" Gerret poses to me this afternoon.
"Poop?" I venture. "Slime?"
He gives me one of his your-the-weirdest-mom-in-the-world looks.
"It's just gooey stinky sand!" He exclaims and leaves me to my bewilderment.

"Is T-Rex the strongest dinosaur?" He stops to ask (early this morning-- first query of the day) as he hurls the Dimetradon at the throat of his beloved T-Rex. I only pseudo-believe in them anyway. (Did I just admit that publicly?) And even if I was a paleontologist, how could I presume one gargantuan reptile stronger than the next?
"Are some dragons good?" This is Gerret again. Nolan poses equally perplexing questions, but he's at school today, asking them to his teachers.
I definitely don't believe in dragons; though admitting this could lead to a somewhat serious discussion with my husband.
"Yes, some dragons are good." This initial response is not satisfactory; he wants me to specify which kinds of dragons are good.
"Blue ones," I say glancing at the blue creature in his hand which used to be a dragon. Now missing tail, wings and arms, it's no longer a dragon in my mind; it's just a menacing face atop a blue body with scaly legs. He studies the creature which I'm sure he still considers a dragon in full form (he's got an imagination). He is considering very seriously my iteration that blue dragons are good.
"Even if he was biting a sheep in his teeth?"
"Yeah, I guess."
I answer requests, too. Like the request to build a castle outside in the sandbox at nine thirty this cheerful, sun-filled February morning. Alas, looks can be deceiving; a couple digs in the sand and he pronounced his fingers frozen, so I answered the request to return to the warmth of our home and open the sand table in the pantry for him. Why didn't he choose the indoor sand box in the beginning? I didn't ask.
I wipe bums when called upon; pour drinks, tie shoes, read stories, make noodles; all upon kind request. I ward of the incessant pleas for treats! and treats! and more treats! please! And that, of course, is not an exhaustive account. The exhaustive account leaves me exhausted at the end of every day.