Rhetorical Questions

It was a Friday. My mother driving me to meet with my father so that I could spend the weekend with him, as I did every other weekend. We were only about five minutes into the half an hour ride when a question popped into my head. I don't know why I thought of it - we hadn't been talking about anything related to it. I'd thought about it before but had never asked it. At that moment, though, I almost couldn't stop myself. I just had to know. So I turned to her with a straight face and said, "Mom, if (your boyfriend) told you that I wasn't allowed to live with you anymore, what would you say?" Shehadn't understood the question, so I continued, "if he were to tell you that, either you had to send me away to live with someone else, or we both had to leave, like he would break up with you, what would you choose? Me, or him?" 

"Why would you ask me a question like that, Madison?"

"Can you please just answer it?" I'd pleaded.

She pulled up to a red light and turned to look at me. "It depends."

My jaw dropped. "On what?"

"On what you were doing that made him say that. I mean, if you were being unreasonable. . ."

It was then that I learned that its not smart to ask questions that you don't want to hear the answers to.