The role of chief Question Answerer generally falls to the stay at home parent rather than the one who goes out into the realm of big people to earn a living.

Or at least it is such in our home. Mostly this is good because I am a Know-It-All at heart and also because I have howstuffworks.com saved as a favorite on my homepage.

The babies aren't exactly asking questions at their age, usually it is I asking of them. "Are you hun-gwee?" or "Do you need fwesh pants?" (Yes, I do occasionally lisp like Porky Pig.)

But it is a far different story for the six year old. Questions are the currency of his world. Many, many, MANY questions. In the beginning the questions were relatively simple.

"Mama, does everything alive have a butt hole?" ("Yes.") "Mama, were there dinosaurs when you were a kid?" ("No!") And of course, one of my favorites, "Mama, do fish fart?" (The jury is still out on this one but my son and I did spend an evening researching it on the web. Yes, you can type " Do fish fart?" into the Ask Jeeves search engine and amazingly pull up quite a large number of links. Who knew?!)

The other night I was upstairs feeding the babies when my oldest made an appearance. With a question, of course.

"Mama, do LEGO's melt if you put them in the microwave?"

Now, knee-deep as I was in bottles and bibs I didn't give this one the appropriate attention I should have.

"Or what about the oven? Would they melt in the oven?"

Now this? This caused me to spin around toward him from my place at the changing table, my mother's version of "Spider Sense" tingling.

"Yes!! Yes, they would melt in the oven!!! Of course, they would! But we don't ever, EVER touch the oven, do we?"

I didn't say it as frantically as I felt but I did want to remind him of a rule we have had since he began toddling about like a small, unsteady Frankenstein only equipped with more curiosity and less sense.

"So you know they would melt in the oven but you don't know if they would melt in the microwave?" (like a dog with a bone, this one)

"Honey, I don't know. Maybe. We'll look it up online later, okay? When I'm done with your brothers?"

Looking back I realize I never should have claimed ignorance.

Now with the microwave we have no hard and fast "no touch ever, never" rule. It has buttons and lights and it makes the most interesting of noises and because my oldest has a Y-chromosome it has held a fascination for him since he was probably two. And like the unanticipative mother I guess I am, I always let him "help" me when I used it.

I would enter the amount of time needed to cook some item and he would be allowed to press the "Start" button. Or he would push the big button to open the door after it dinged, "All Done!" In other words, my eldest boy is well-schooled in the way of this kitchen appliance.

Unfortunately.

The long and short of it is this: LEGO's do indeed melt in the microwave. And whatever sort of polystyrene they are made from will fuse nicely with the glass turntable at high temperatures. By "fuse" I mean I am in the process of receiving a replacement turntable from the fine folks at Whirlpool who apparently feel sorry for me.

Especially after I went through the whole sordid tale with the woman operator (herself a mother of boys) and begged for express shipment as the microwave is my main cooking tool.

It should be here by the end of the week.