Mansplaining with flints

No, it isn't a Neanderthal reference, though I like the way you were thinking.

It was me, explaining with all the knowledge that a year 6 primary school teacher has in their possession, about the three classes of rock. I was explaining this to Cro, as she showed me an interesting-looking flint that she had picked up from the beach down in Walberswick. It almost looked as if there was something inside it. But I had been teaching rocks to 10-year-olds for quite a bit of that term, and was feeling happy in my own knowledge.

"As we all know", I probably began, there are three classes of rock. There is sedimentary, where all the sand or grit settles and forms layers and is then pressed into a rock over millions of years, there is igneous, which all basically comes out as lava or liquid rock and then solidifies into a rock that can be quite glassy and hard. Then metamorphic is a sedimentary rock that has been changed deep underground by heat and pressure into something else. 

It was quite clear to me that these flints on the beach were definitely not sedimentary - the only kind of rock that can have fossils in them - so anything inside was just a glitch, co-incidence or trick of the light. 

When you explain something that you know, it can be done in a number of ways. You can answer questions specifically to help your questioner. It can be done in a spirit of wonder "Guess what I just found out about giraffes!" (a bit juvenile, but at least enthusiastic), or sometimes it can be done because your explaining is a very comfortable feeling that you have, which reminds you of how much you know and can explain. It can creep into all kinds of -splaining, and though I know that this is not restricted to men, well, they have form. 

I have, outrageously, even heard this kind of explaining from medical practitioners who should have known better. I remember one specific and mercifully-short-lived epilepsy consultant who assured Cro that even if her daughter had not reacted to his prescribed drugs in the way that she did, then she should have done. There were others who had all kinds of questions about some elements of care which seemed to vanish when they realised that they, the medical experts, had mislaid six months worth of files. 

The nice thing about the final, wonderful consultant who has had care of Cro's daughter these last 15 years is that if a question comes up where they do not know the answer, he will always say "We don't know". Very often this is the smartest answer, and the best saver of breath.

There is a lovely saying which I try, and often fail to live by: "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all grounds for doubt". Confidence is great, but doing some research and double-checking is always good too.

If I had double-checked I would have found out the very interesting fact that flints, despite their glassy, round nodule, very unsedimentary appearance, are in fact an unusual kind of sedimentary rock. They formed in warm seas which had huge amounts of silica dissolved in them, ready to be precipitated out of it. They would start off around some object already there, a grain of sand, a piece of debris, maybe even the carapace of some dead creature. So, yes, flints can have fossils inside them, at the very heart, and I am sure Cro found it hard to forgive me for all the ones she threw away after my casual advice.

So the takeaway is: It is very nice to explain something that you know - if you are asked - but always make sure that it really is something that you know.

(NB, the picture at the top is one of the interesting flints Cro had picked up over the years. I think that one is a sea-urchin)