ODDBALL

What’s so funny about this? You have to read and/or listen to this one carefully because there are three kinds of word play going on. It starts with the very first word “even” which can be several different parts of speech depending on the context. Here it collocates, goes with, the word “though” to become an adverb meaning the same thing as “although”, setting up the opposite of an expectation. We have a pair of math teachers who taught together for 20 years, so we would expect them to have some things in common but the phrase “even though” sets it up so that we expect something out of the ordinary. In mathematics, “even” is an adjective referring to every other number beginning with 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. Note that this pair have been together for 20 “odd” years. “Odd” usually means “strange”, or not normal. In mathematics “odd” refers to every other number beginning with 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. But when collocated with the word years, “odd” has an entirely different meaning, namely approximately