So the husband and I were having dinner the other evening. We had a rather routine conversation for the two of us. I was wondering if any of your conversations go something like this.

We were discussing change of meaning for a particular word over the generations. When it was first used in conversation, it wasn’t considered a rude word at all. Everyone used it, but over the years it became an obscenity, especially for women to utter, or for men to use in mixed company. Then it became pretty much forbidden language for years. Slowly it came back into use, and is now used for just about every part of a sentence, except as an article. Any way, that segued into the discussion of language and its many variations, from early man up to present day. This conversation took about thirty minutes.

Then, along with dessert, we got into a discussion about how writing started. Math is an easy idea, anyone who has more than ten of something needed to know how much they had. So, a line represented so many of such a thing. But then, how did they know what lines related to which item. So, we got into a rather heated discussion about pictograph languages and symbols, or rather, which probably came first. Then we got into how that skill was passed to other generations and other groups. Was it an idea that someone showed a different culture and they adapted to fit their language, or did other cultures come about writing all on their own? That got a bit heated too, mainly because I see it as language based and the husband sees it as an offshoot of mathematics. I can see his point, but I also see a need to communicate information as tribes became cultures and cultures spread out over a geographic area.

As we finished out dessert, and were waiting for our check, we continued discussion language versus math, and how intertwined they were with the development of our modern idea of country, origin, and cultural development. Leading to the difficulty people have today of never being able to be alone. They constantly have to be in contact with someone via their phone and other devices. Which led to the idea that it would be interesting to put a modern gadget junkie in a distant accommodation without any of their go to gizmos to see how they would cope. Take them back to, oh, the early 1940’s and leave them on their own for an agreed amount of time.

About the time the check turned up, I left to use the facilities, and the husband paid the bill and said he would meet me at the car. When I came out the couple sitting behind us stopped me and asked it we were professors. I said no, not now. They said they learned more about prehistory overhearing our conversation than they ever had in class. “How do you guys know all this stuff?” They asked. I just smiled and said, “We read. A lot. About a lot.” “The lady said, “That is so weird. We just talk about the kids.” I smiled again, and made my way to the car.

To us, this was a normal dinner conversation. How is that weird, or is it?