Change is Sometimes Slow

Canada converted to the metric system in the 1970s with the main argument being that the United States, Canada's largest trading partner, would convert shortly. Forty years later, the United States still has not converted to metric, leading me to wonder what all the fuss was about in the 70s.

If I ask my son what Fahrenheit means, he will give me "the look" that, roughly translated, means he is talking to a dinosaur. (In fact, when my son was very young, he once asked my wife if she was alive when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Her reply: "Some days it feels like it.")

This dinosaur prefers the old days of Fahrenheit, gallons and miles. My head has never quite made the conversion. My wife read somewhere that you can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit by multiplying the Celsius number by 9/5ths and adding 32 degrees. This is a bit too complicated for me to bother with. I enjoy listening to the odd weather forecast from Detroit that still provides temperatures in Fahrenheit. For me, 101 degrees is HOT and -10 is COLD.

And some of the metric measurements have never really caught on in Canada. Most people still prefer to give height in feet and inches rather than metres and centimetres, and weight in pounds rather than kilograms (although it does sound like you weigh less in the metric system because one kilogram is equal to 2.2 pounds).

You can see my problem here. Old ways of thinking die hard--