Like many, I awoke this morning and began pondering the eternal questions, like, is my head getting smaller?
I wasn’t being facetious. My new Tilley hat had arrived. When I put it on, I discovered it was much larger than my other hat. I confirmed the other was a seven and a half, so the two hats were the same size.* Ergo, my head must be shrinking.
Walking about with my oversized hat on, I entertained the other questions that often plague modern humans.
1. Am I gaining weight or are my pants shrinking?
2. Are my pants getting longer, or am I getting shorter?
3. Is it possible for me to be both gaining weight and getting shorter?
4. Can my pant legs be getting longer while my pants waist is shrinking?
5. If something really had 1/4 the fat of the regular stuff, can I really eat four times as much?
6. How much beer can a beer drinker drink if a beer drinker only drank beer?
These are serious questions. The one about my shrinking head especially worries me. I can see myself as a man walking around without a head. People would probably soon start head-shaming me, shouting, “Hey, there’s little head,” whenever I pass.
There’s family precedence. My mother, who was much taller than me when I was a child, now seems to be about the size of a garden gnome. She appears to be shrinking more in every dimension every time that I see her. I figure that soon, we’ll be able to hear her, but not see her, unless she stands at the right angle and in the right light. It’s like, “Okay, I see her shadow. Let me just trace that back to her.”
Alas, like others, I found no easy answers to these questions. That’s probably why they plague us.
The quest goes on.
*Editing note: Yes, I know that not all sizes are equal sizes during the modern industrial age. Most people must try on several sets of garments or shoes of the same size before finding one that fits right. Hence, there was one shortcoming to the Tilley replacement hat process: it’s predicated on the idea that all of their hats are the same size.
Michael Seidel, writer 