British Education

When I was but a wee laddy (at the tender age of 8) I realised that when classmates counted time, they would always start at one, yet whenever I used a stopwatch (or my handy timer on my do-everything watch), a full second would go by before counting the first second.

So I approached a teacher during a science lesson where timing things is inevitable, and posed the question, 
"Sir, if the stopwatch only goes to one after a full second, why doesn't everyone start by counting from zero?"

To which he responded, "Just count from one, everyone else is doing it."