Yup, that’s about the size of it. If you’re not ploughing or harvesting, the Romans didn’t care. (Until they reformed the calendar.)
So, on the Roman calendar the first month is March, then April, May, June, then “Fifth month”, “sixth month” (later renamed after Julius and Augustus Caesar) and so on until the tenth month. The Romans were not the most creative people when it came to names. It’s almost worse when it comes to their own given names!
And they did this whole weird thing where they counted backwards from the next Kalends, Nones, or Ides rather than forwards from the start of the month like we do, made all the more weird by their penchant for inclusive counting.
March 15th is the Ides of March, and the day before that is “The day before the Ides of March” and the day before that is… “three days before the Ides”. Because that day plus the day before the Ides plus the Ides itself makes three days, and if you think this doesn’t make sense – you’re absolutely right!
But it made sense to them, and I guess that’s what matters.
(We have barely even scratched the surface of how bizarre the Roman calendar could be.)
February wasn’t a month. It was just the period between the last month of the year, December, and the first month, March. If you’re not out ploughing or harvesting, it’s not counted in the calendar.
The term “double negative” refers to negative concord in English. This is a feature of many English dialects but, importantly, is not something either character employs in this strip.
The fact that Frazz uses both the words “won’t” and “can’t” in the same sentence does not, ipso facto, make that an example of a double negative.
Well, I don’t know how old your kids are! When I was April’s age, and for quite a few years after that, my sister and I still showered with my mother regularly. (When I was April’s age, I got soap in my eyes and didn’t open them again for a day and a half, so even if my parents had some weird body hangups they still would’ve indulged me. Nobody wanted a repeat of Shampoogate 1987!)
And for that matter, even into adolescence my sister, my mother, and I would regularly chat when one was in the bath. I mean, we came out of her body, she used to change her diapers. Near the end of her life, that was reversed. Also, NYC apartments are made of brick, like pizza ovens, and boy you can feel it in the summers when you don’t have a/c! Not wanting your family to see you just seems… well, it’s not how I was raised.
Lots of older homes in the US and Canada don’t have locks on them. It’s just not as universal as some of these commenters seem to think!
Honestly, good manners are better than locks. With good manners, people knock before they open the door. Without good manners and with locks people just rattle the doorknob and then bang and yell until you open it.
And bathroom locks can be a safety hazard. What if you trip and fall coming out of the tub? I have a cousin who had a heart attack on the toilet, and if her husband hadn’t called out to her while he passed by the door it might have been a long time until she was found.
> I don’t mind my spouse coming into the bathroom when I’m in there naked like that, but NOT my friggin’ KIDS…
What did you do when they were toddlers, hold it in until another person could watch them?
Yup, that’s about the size of it. If you’re not ploughing or harvesting, the Romans didn’t care. (Until they reformed the calendar.)
So, on the Roman calendar the first month is March, then April, May, June, then “Fifth month”, “sixth month” (later renamed after Julius and Augustus Caesar) and so on until the tenth month. The Romans were not the most creative people when it came to names. It’s almost worse when it comes to their own given names!
And they did this whole weird thing where they counted backwards from the next Kalends, Nones, or Ides rather than forwards from the start of the month like we do, made all the more weird by their penchant for inclusive counting.
March 15th is the Ides of March, and the day before that is “The day before the Ides of March” and the day before that is… “three days before the Ides”. Because that day plus the day before the Ides plus the Ides itself makes three days, and if you think this doesn’t make sense – you’re absolutely right!
But it made sense to them, and I guess that’s what matters.
(We have barely even scratched the surface of how bizarre the Roman calendar could be.)