Why Do Cows Walk

"Dad, why do cows walk?" Little Hoss asked me.

Indeed, why do cows walk?

My daughter has been asking more questions than usual of late. I think that they have also become more evolved questions as well, things that perhaps only a prodigy type child would ask. They go beyond the normal dad questions and seem to have entered into the world of philosophy. Does a thing exist only because I think it exists or what is the sound of one hand clapping.

And now, in a trip to the grocery store to load up on pop tarts, why do cows walk?

I realize that in this stage in my daughter's life that I am her primary teacher. Just about everything she has learned comes from me or Ms. Herless. Ms. Herless is her imaginary teacher that she says teaches her things like Ballet moves which seem to resemble grape crushing in the making of fine wine. I'm not really sure where Ms. Herless has come from and when I ask my little Mozart about her, she only says that she is her teacher and she likes to teach her things.

So I ask: Ms. Herless, why do cows walk?

I looked over at the cows in the pasture as we passed by them. They are the same cows that have been there for 3 years, or at least I think they are. They roam a big pasture, eating grass, crapping and basically doing what cows do. I imagine a lot of cud chewing. I have never thought much about them but my kids seem to love them. Perhaps because Uncle Bricksalesman taught them to play "Hey Cow." A fun little game where you yell "HEY COW!" out the window as loud as you can. If a cow looks, you win. That's it. That's the whole game.

It's oddly fun.

But now I am being forced by my Beethoven to think more about these cows as I try to formulate an answer that will surely one day appear on her thesis when she graduates from Yale.

I could explain that the cows walk due to the evolution of the species. That once the cows began as a big old goo pile and that eventually nature selected the more cow like goo pile parts and eventually made a cow. And that's why cows walk honey, natural selection.

But I have a feeling that my daughter was searching for a more metaphysical answer than the biological one. She's a thinker which is what I think motivates her to destroy shit. I don't know how it motivates her but I have got to believe that there is a reason she has dumped my cell phones in the toilet.

Perhaps the cows are walking because they are searching for the meaning of their existence. Are they meant to roam a pasture to one day become only delicious steaks. But are delicious steaks not something noble to aspire to, only second the greatness that is the pig and bacon?

Or perhaps they walk to escape the thoughts that they will never be more than cows. That their nightmare is the life that they have been put into. Seriously, it's got to be pretty damn boring to be a cow.

Although both sounded plausible, I knew they would not give my daughter the intellectual challenge that she was seeking. So I offered her another explanation.

"Honey, the cows are walking because they are having an inner conflict between extensionality and intensionality. Do they judge objects to be equal if they have the same external properties or are they concerned with whether two descriptions are intended to be the same or not. They ponder these things and they walk as it symbolizes the movement towards truth and truth is what we all seek, cows and people. And that honey, is why cows walk."

"No dad! The cows walk because they did a stinky poot!" She roars with laughter.

Ah, my little Einstein.