Sis Bowman

Last Friday we observed the 70th anniversary of World Standards Day. In 1946, a group of delegates from 25 countries gathered in London to facilitate the use of standards around the world. One of the results of the meeting was the ISO or International Standards Organization. Most folks understand the need to standardize, but still disagree on what to call the result.

What I find a little ironic is that in many ways the people refuse to standardize such things as money and measurements. Oh, I remember the big push in the 1980s to push us to the metric system.

Thank goodness most all of that fell apart in the early 1990s. The only remnants of that movement are the two liter bottles of soft drinks and the 5K, or kilometer, run. Other than that, we still use pounds and ounces and feet and inches.

And I, for one, say thank heavens. What in the world would we do if we had to change our old adages to metrics? My Grandma would never have said, “You have to walk 1.609344 kilometers in someone else’s shoes.”

Think of describing an over bearing person by saying, “Give him 25.400000 millimeters and he’ll take 1.6093440 kilometers.” It is much easier to say inch and mile.

How would it sound if we were so exasperated with someone who was acting dense to suggest hitting them over the head with a 0.6095999 meters by 1.2191999 meters. And just think of the 2 by 4 signs that the lumber yards would have to change.

Is it any wonder we didn’t get on board with the metric system? The entire use of our American language would have to be altered.

Even our songs would have to change. Ernie Ford would have had to sing “You load 14.515408 metric tons and what do you get?” It just doesn’t have a ring to it. If The Who had sung “I can see for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers,” their careers may have ended in 1967.

Television shows would have also had to adjust theme songs and names. The TV drama “Six Degrees” would become “0.1047198 Radians.” And I can’t imagine watching Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor sing “Green Hectares,” can you?

But the most confusing show was on television back in the 1980s. It was called “Five Mile Creek.” The confusing part is that it took place in Australia and should have been called “8.0467200 Kilometer Creek.” Since it was an historical show, maybe we were supposed to know Australia hadn’t converted to the metric system when the series was supposed to have taken place.

The whole metric thing is baffling to me. If we ever do standardize our weights and measures to metric, I hope we, at least, don’t change our temperature system. Doesn’t 32 degrees Fahrenheit sound a lot warmer than zero degrees Celsius?

Sis Bowman can be reached at eebowman@columbus.rr.com.