First Rave!!!

Time for a rave.
This has been bugging me for quite some time now, trivial as it may seem.

I believe I was in grade three (or was it grade 5?) when the substitute teacher was handing out permission slips for an excursion some days later. The destination escapes me, but I remember we departed at 9:00 am and arrived back at school around midday. Seeing the time listed as 12:00pm, I put up my hand to reveal my discovery of this blunder.
“Shouldn’t it be 12:00 am?” I asked.
After all, I was no fool and knew something about time. AM being from the early hours of the morning until noon and PM the afternoon and following night-time. I was feeling rather chuffed about the fact that I had spotted a mistake, made by the all-seeing, all-knowing beings called teachers. Until the sub brought me down like an leak brings down a zeppelin.
“Not unless you want to come back at midnight” she replied, accompanied by the sniggers of my classmates. As I later found out, that at 12 o’clock we shift from AM to PM, and vice versa at night.

To which I must say: WHAT THE HECK?

Seriously, who’s bright idea was that? I mean technically that means that we go 12:00, 1:00, 2:00 and so on! It defies everything taught in pre-school mathematics! Did we learn how to start counting by going to the biggest number first, skipping to straight to the bottom and work our way up? I doubt it. Does this mean that when folks over at NASA do their countdowns, they should go
“One…ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…Lift Off?” Surely it would make sense to start AM at 1:00 and finish at 12:00 instead of finishing the cycle off early and sticking the last hour onto the next one. Frankly, I think it’s just plain dumb, because it’s like starting a new day when the other one hasn’t finished yet.

Now before you start rattling off an email saying that I am the dumb one, let me expand.

Time is a funny thing. Technically, like actual counting, the new cycle of either AM or PM starts at 00:00, and works it’s way up. Fine, I get that. But why call it 12:00 AM. Who decided that 12 would be the new zero?
It’s like in 1984, with the whole ‘2+2=5’ shtick. It messes with my brain.
Kinda like daylight savings. But that’s an issue for another blog.

In conclusion, I reckon the military and relative parties are the only ones with their heads screwed on the right way. Start at 00:00 hours and work your way up to 23:59 hours before starting again the next day at 00:00.

But hey….maybe it’s just me.

-Professor Bear.