That old devil perception...

I had an amazing moment tonight with Isaac as we were lying in bed:

He asked "what's a frown upside down?"  I answered "A smile!"  He asked "What's a SMILE upside down?"  I answered  "a frown".  He then asked "What's a frown halfway to a smile?"

I thought and said, "I think it's just a straight line mouth"

He said "No...  it's a moon".

And what hit me about this is that as we were talking about this whole smiles thing, we had a fundamentally different IDEA of how that smile was turning upside down:  I saw it like a line bent upwards, straighening, then bending downwards.  He saw it as a fixed crescent, that rotates to turn upside down, so if you stop halfway, it's a moon.

What it told me was that sometimes you can agree on a starting point, and an ending point, but have a completely different way of getting from A to B:  If Isaac hadn't asked me about the "half way", I'd never have known we weren't thinking of the same thing...

I know it's really a minor thing, but it really took me aback in a good way and gave me some insight into how people brains work differently, and how important it is to understand the process.