I like it, Katerina (probably because I can follow you). Well written and delivered.

While reading I ended up thinking about order of numbers, and right off the bat there is an issue with our famous number 0.

In 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the first number is 1.

But in 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the first number is 0.

It is of course convention to read 1st as first, but the world would have been a different place (human brains would have behaved differently) if we had always written 0st and called that first, or a word meaning first as we know it.

The ancient folks that devised our languages understood already that 1 and first were not one and the same thing all of the time, and therefore invented two words.

The choice is therefore overcome linguistically, because we can apply a word to the order of things without that word needing to be identical to the specific number. The good part is that the meaning is always one of two, and these two are found next to each other and not further apart.

The first present is indeed the first thing gifted and that is not 0. The first year we walk around the planet, however, is indeed 0.

And it was with finishing up your article that you got to that, mathematically. Very much fun for the reader (me).

Thank you.