“How can there be Times New Roman font?” Kit asked, “When there are no new Romans. I thought they went extinct.”
“They didn’t actually go extinct,” I countered, “They were human, and there’re still plenty of humans around. Roman culture and language sort of faded and evolved into other things and bits of it got absorbed into other cultures and languages.”
“You’re not kidding about there being plenty of humans around,” Kit mused, “I wonder if rabbits use the phrase ‘breeding like humans’. The funny thing is, wherever you go, you never actually see humans doing it, but you must be having it off every time the door shuts because there are gazillions of you everywhere I look.”
“I think,” I theorized, “That’s it might be less to do with over-active sex lives and more to do with us being very good at staying alive compared to most species.”
Suddenly, Kit startled me by making the most high-pitched squeaking noises. Soon, he became indignant at the pained expression on my face, and haughtily informed me that I was privileged to have witnessed a very promising performance of The Bee Gees, Staying Alive. That the fact that I needed to be told this contradicts his conclusion somewhat, but don’t tell him I said that.
Cutting short Kit’s singing career, I steered back to the subject at hand, “You know humans have sanitation, and vaccines, and Caesarians.”
“Caesarians, eh?” Kit mused, “Didn’t you have a Caesarian Salad at that restaurant one time?”
“I should hope not!” I admonished, “Do you know what a Caesarian is?”
“Enlighten me,” he encouraged. The problem with living with a young adult meerkat is that, although now grown up, he has still only had four years to learn about the world. So, while he is able to rationalize like an adult, his general knowledge is similar to someone who went into a coma as a child, and didn’t wake up until they were twenty-two. Or possibly, like someone who never paid attention to anything anybody else (by which I mean me) said. Ever.
So I described a Caesar salad to Kit. And then I explained what a Caesarian Section is.
“Oh, right,” he said, “Surely, you can understand my conclusion. Due to the addition of the suffix, ‘ian’, I thought that that made Caesarian an adjective, like ovarian or authoritarian. ‘Caesar Salad is all wrong!” he announced, “You’re using a proper noun as an adjective.”
Ignoring the grammatical failings of salad names, I asked “Would you like to try a Caesar salad for dinner?”
“After learning about Caesarian Sections,” he replied, “I don’t feel like eating anything for quite a while! To find out the answer to my original question, let’s look up the history of Times New Roman.” So we did, and got absolutely no answer whatsoever.