194. i heart questions

I was listening to Terry Gross on the NPR Books podcast. And I've always loved Gross' show, Fresh Air because I've never heard another interviewer ask such consistently beautiful, insightful questions.

It's actually a secret goal of mine to do something with my life worthy of being on Fresh Air. See, when she's interviewing an author, you can tell that she actually read the book herself (rather than having an assistant read the book and submit a list of questions) because she doesn't just ask the standard, "what made you write this," or "tell us about the plot," type questions. She gets into the substance of the story by asking specific probing questions about a character or story element. She has a way of getting her guest to open up and reveal the heart of what makes their book tick, and you can tell that the authors appreciate the inquiry because her questions come out of a careful reading of their work.

So anyway, I'm listening to this podcast and for some reason the thought hits me - despite the things I wrote in my previous blog about my finding contentment as a single person, I can totally see myself falling crazy in love with a woman who knows how to ask amazing questions of me. And I hope that doesn't make me come across as some narcissistic egomaniac. I love to ask questions of the other person as well, when on a date, because I find women fascinating.

But sometimes I go too far.

I know for a fact that my love of questions freaked out this one girl a friend set me up with in college. See, one question I like to ask is, "what are your goals in life?" And she said she didn't know and unfortunately (for her) I found that amazing and so I started to ask things like, "well, if you could do anything you wanted to do, what would you do?" and, "what did you want to do when you were growing up?" and "what do you like to do in your spare time?" And I suppose the short, one word answers should have been a hint, but I just didn't know when to stop. I thought I was showing an interest in her, she probably thought I was a member of the Inquisitiion.

Needless to say there was never a second date.