I find human nature pretty funny sometimes. I have to choose to laugh at it, though, because otherwise it can annoy me. And, that's never good. I like to stay in control of my mood, impervious to outside influence. After all, what sense does it make to allow anyone and anything to determine whether or not I have a good day? No, thank you.
Concerning the human nature I was speaking of, have you ever shown somebody a good way of doing something and then watched them do it a more difficult, less efficient way despite your well delivered instruction? I've seen this a lot over the years. I know that I've even been guilty of it myself just as often as others have. Something in ourselves just causes us to think that we have it all figured out and so we dismiss the well-intentioned suggestions of others.
What's even funnier to me is when the results of this nature worm their way into our culture. For example, while learning French in junior high, I learned that in French descriptive words are spoken after the noun in which they are describing. This makes perfect sense. So, instead of The White House, the French would say La Maison Blanc (The House White). It may sound strange to you, but think about those times when someone is using too many descriptive words and you are getting impatient because you still don't know what (the noun) they are talking about. (That's kind of funny. "What the noun are you talking about?! That's going to be my new thing.) For example, "I went to this really great, cheap, brand new, in fashion, cutting edge hair salon." In English, we wind up trying to remember all the adjectives so that when we finally find out what is being talked about we can apply those descriptions to the appropriate subject being described. We're left to wonder until the end. In French, they tell you what it is and then describe it, which makes more sense to me.
Similarly, it makes more sense to write the date noting the year first, though we save it for last. I guess, so we can surprise people at the end. "What do you mean you don't remember? This says that you did this just last week. See? February 19th... OHhhh 1998. Sorry. I hadn't seen the year yet."
There is plenty of stuff like this that we just insist on doing a certain way even though the rest of the world does it better. How about Fahrenheit versus Celsius or American Standard versus the Metric system? And what about football? Most of the world assumes you are talking about the sport in which you use your feet, but we've got the market cornered on the term soccer because it's somehow better? How about opening a banana? Ever tried to open it on the other end? Monkeys even get that right. But, since we're not monkeys let's continue to do it the "better" (hard) way.
