the most difficult thing to understand is that events that appear to be simultaneous in one frame may not be simultaneous in another. this has many effects that are not easy to perceive or understand. since the length of an object is the distance from head to tail at one simultaneous moment, it follows that if two observers disagree about what events are simultaneous then this will affect (sometimes dramatically) their measurements of the length of objects. furthermore, if a line of clocks appear synchronized to a stationary observer and appear to be out of sync to that same observer after accelerating to a certain velocity then it follows that during the acceleration the clocks ran at different speeds. some may even run backwards. this line of reasoning leads to general relativity.