If anyone noticed, I didn't use the word 'respectively' in the first sentence, because noon can also be referred to as 12:00 P.M. and midnight can be referred to as 12:00 A.M. Actually, one second after 12:00 and one second after 0:00 is P.M. and A.M. respectively.
Their brush with the confusion stemmed from a professor who told them the time given to answer a certain question on an extensive test would take place between 12:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M. This lead the wiseacre child to tease the professor that they had 13 hours to answer the question. The professor, not ready to concede they might have been misleading, replied that noon was 12:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M. was 1:00 P.M., therefore there was an hour given to providing the answer.
Apparently it's a common mix up to think noon is 12:00 A.M. and midnight is 12:00 P.M. Thankfully, the military and law enforcement people use military time and operate on a 24 hour clock, with 1200 hours being noon and 0:00 being midnight. This helps in real life and in TV and movies. Think 'Zero Dark Thirty.'
My own confusion with A.M., P.M. and noon and midnight occurred when I told Gus, who helped deliver flowers for us at the family shop, that the ship was going to leave soon and that he didn't have much time to get to the pier and deliver the flowers. The shipping news at the back of the paper said the ship would sail at 12:00 A.M. and it was now 10:00 A.M.
There was still plenty of time to get there before the gangplank came up, but there was, at least to my thinking, only two hours to shove off time. Gus got there with time to spare but came back with one over on the young student.
Gus was one of the itinerant delivery guys who would come by and hustle deliveries, for 50 cents, or a dollar, plus carfare. This was the 1960s, so this was real money then. He was reliable, and actually made the delivery rather than offer the flowers to a bartender for a few shots of rotgut rye.
Gus was somewhat tall, lanky, and as best as I can remember, always in a brown woolen coat--even in July. His teeth were bad and he of course spoke Greek and English. I think I can remember a Greek language newspaper sticking out of the overcoat's pocket. Thus, it was only English he couldn't read. So, when I told him the need for haste, based on what I read in the paper, he deferred to my knowledge of English and did hustle a bit extra.
He didn't return right away, but when he next appeared at he shop with the receipt the told everyone that 12:00 A.M. was not noon and that the ship wasn't going to sail that morning. It was sailing 12:00 A.M., but that was 12 hours later at midnight. What ship this was I have no idea, but we did sometimes get requests to deliver flowers to the usual passenger ships of the era, The SS United States, The Queen Mary, The Queen Elizabeth, and the SS France, as well as freighters.
I felt embarrassed, but showed him the paper and said it did say 12:00 A.M., so therefore he did have to hurry. He said no, that meant midnight. Plenty of time, son.
Like all the guys who would come by the shop and make deliveries, Gus was an unforgettable character. He was forever in the brown overcoat and once really did open it up and reveal that he had more watches pinned to the inside flaps than a Mexican general had medals on his chest.
A.M. or P.M., Gus had something to offer.
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