Shrinkage ... Shrinkage ... Shrinkage

“All we are is dust in the wind….” Kansas

Shrinkage…it happens. I know what you’re thinking…that scene in Seinfeld where George experiences the ultimate consequence of frigid waters. But that’s just the tip of the shrinkage iceberg…read on.

Shrinkage is a fact. My wife, Carolyn, and I were dining at a local restaurant. We ordered the same entrées. They arrived, monumental portions, lapping over the sides of the plates, enough to feed a small army. We gorged ourselves and finally called it quits. “Too much, we’ll share next time,” she said. The owner came by, reminding us we can order a child’s portion. The “child’s portion?” Has age finally shrunk us back to puberty? Heaven forbid!

More. I spent my week’s allowance and bought a huge box of cereal. Their multi-colored bulks, like so many faux, back-lot Hollywood movie sets, line the shelves, each seeming to promise something substantial. I opened it today, took out the contents. The inner cellophane bag was about one-third full…what a fraud! Shrinkage again, including the contents of my wallet. Who ever heard of buying air? Cereal is either on the endangered list or being rationed these days. I’m voting for see-through boxes!

Government is all for shrinkage, of course. Haha. Your money! It’s the poster pinup for obesity. The Beltway is straining to contain its bulging belly. No shrinkage there. Its rapacious appetite is laying waste to our cash crop. We’re shrinking day by day. Have Dust Bowl days returned?

Everything is shrinking. Take technology. Remember 1945 and Dick Tracy’s two-way radio? Now the i-Phone. Or the first computer, with 20,000 vacuum tubes, that filled a warehouse? Recall your first transistor radio? It rolled out in 1954, in time for Elvis. How about GA Tech geeks, the geniuses who transcended the slide rule for the hand-held calculator? The Go-Dawgs crowd remains in the Dark Ages, unable to even master the ruler.

There’s more. The camera. From a tri-pod box to a speck in a pair of sun glasses. Who’d have believed it? Even listening devices, which have gone from large microphones to instruments smaller than a shirt button. Shrinkage is on a roll, and Bluetooth is listening. You may be bugged and not even know it.

American appetites are not shrinking. Obesity rules. Hormones and steroids in food and bodies are the culprits. Like blimps, Americans are swelling to mammoth proportions. They resemble comic book caricatures or professional wrestlers, Flintstones and Simpsons. The largest boy on our high school football team probably weighed 180 pounds. Today that wouldn’t even make the cheerleader’s squad!

President Blow Hard, the White House windbag, has been shrinking a deep-water dilemma, too. Oily water. He’s learned they don’t mix. He seems to become more diminished daily in his response. Shirking is a synonym of his shrinkage.

BP, meanwhile, has shrunk by about $90 billion. European pensioners are starving. It’s now chained to the public whipping post, being flogged and castigated by sinless Congressmen for its transgressions. Talk about hypocrisy! Never mind the fat-hog oil binge Americans are guzzling. No shrinkage there. Ah, truths are lies, and lies are truths. Shrinkage always casts a shadow of blame.

But back home. Did you know a Shrink Demon lives in your closet? It can shrink clothes while they hang there. It happens. We blame the cleaners, but we know the truth. And did you know that your whole body shrinks? Gravity is the criminal here. I was once 5’ 11”, but I’ve lost an inch…where?

So here we are, sitting at the foot of the Crux of Shrinkage. Its most ghastly consequence is the shrinkage of our own Relevance into a Sea of Indifference. Don’t deny it. Once we were important, and all that goes with it…now look at us, mere shadows of our former selves. Don’t gloat, ye who have not yet arrived…you soon will.

The entire matter of Shrinkage was summed up by my articulate wife in a lively discussion of politics. “You have one vote, that’s how big you are!” Pretty small in the grand scheme of things, right? It was further brought home by my factotum who said, “Bud, get to the ultimate conclusion of shrinkage…dust unto dust.” Dark, a grim perspective!

Shrinkage … it happens. Embrace the “child’s portion” and at all costs avoid frigid waters!

Bud Hearn
June 17, 2010