Shrink To Fit
Don't touch that!!
Many years ago I, along with the rest of my hippie-dippie gearhead cohort, wore jeans that were shipped a bit overlarge, made of a building material only slightly softer than sandstone, and we were expected to mold these garments to our own bodies through a process of soaking, laundering, wearing, abusing, and leaving out in the weather until a magical process had achieved the desired result - a pair of button-fly denims that fit us.
It apparently never occured to anyone to just buy jeans that fit to begin with.
This is an analog for a lot of other things in life. The world likes to create a Shrink-To-Fit set of rules designed to quash individual thought, to prevent boat-rockers from actually rocking anything, boat or otherwise, and to keep people who have no imagination calm in their misunderstanding of what imagination really is. See also “sense of humor.”
Hi, My name is Bud Simpson and I’m a Smartass®. People who deal with me on a regular basis know this. They also know that, on average, I can only say two or three serious things in a row and then I am required to let go a zinger of some kind. My sometimes dangerous wit is much faster than my thought processes and as such, the punch lines come out of my mouth before I can even begin to decide whether it might be a good thing to just shut the fuck up. More than once, my inability to control and self-edit in advance has forced me to run for cover, sometimes across several state lines and at great risk to my personal self. When necessary, I can run and hide. I’m not proud.
Recently, I became a happy smartass, having shuffled off the chains of existential misery, grief, guilt, and depression in favor of an enlightened and much more bouyant sense of well-being. You can read about it here:
While several members of my virtual family wholeheartedly supported my escape from the depths of clinical reality, a few people found my attitude cavalier and unsustainable. Cavalier is a word my ex-wife used to describe me. I respect all their opinions and their rights to possess them, but they seem to want to shrink my joy and exuberance to fit their limits and lives that they’ve chosen.
Poppycock, I say.
I never actually say that, but I was running out of serious things to work with.
The irony, of course, is that I’ve always been a cynic and prone to imagining the worst possible outcomes for any situation. My mom said I was the poster boy for Doom and Gloom. I was, and until recently, that mode of operations had continued unabated for years, yea, verily, decades. Catastrophizing has always been my superpower.
The opportunity to take a few steps back and give my whole life-enterprise a good looking-over has allowed me to better understand that the victimhood gene present in this thinking weighs more than the solid gold elephant in the room.
Try this: Monday when you go to work, look around you for something that needs improvement - a process, a company policy, a rule that is constantly enforced even though no one knows who made up the rule or why.
In “Joe Versus The Volcano”, Joe Banks, liberated from his miserable job by an ominous “brain cloud”, gives a wheel attached to the Main Drain a good couple of spins, in spite of the sign that reads, “Do Not Touch.” Nothing happened. He had simply been shrunken to fit the rules.
Challenge this rule, hopefully in writing, and send to everyone who follows this rule. The first person to reply to your suggestion will probably occupy the highest rung on your company’s ladder of self-service and nametagless importance. Their reaction will be probably be swift and decisive, if not indecipherable:
“Thank you for your suggestion. No. We don’t need to change that system. It’s worked well for us for quite some time. Changes like these are expensive to implement and without studying the long-term effects, there is a chance that we’d have to revert to the current paradigm sooner rather than later.”
That paragraph can be edited down to three words: “Shrink To Fit.”
By the calendar, I am an old guy, but my sense of belonging is with people decades younger than myself. That seems to be working okay for me. There are some who think this is unbecoming my advanced station in life. So what?
“Shrink To Fit!”
I think not. My current game plan includes expanding exponentially in every direction as quickly and as abruptly as possible, leaving the oracles of the common wisdom to bemoan my juvenile appropriations. They don’t get it. How is this at all possible?
The quick and not so easy answer is that it isn’t possible if you have to ask for permission to go beyond your accepted limits, but it’s like walking right down Broadway if you accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, everyone else is just in self-prservation mode, sleep-walking, too scared and too full of shit to try.
I have been given the gift of good health, a container that while less than attractive is certainly serviceable, a fairly strong mind - yeah, spare me - and the willingness to expand in every direction to suit my need to live what’s left of an unfettered life.
I’m getting far too large to shrink back again. I’ll let you know how it works out.
Meanwhile, the Third Battle of the Callipygian Insurgency rages on, and I must pick a side to fight on. I’m going in unarmed. Wish me luck. If I should fall in battle, don’t come looking for me. I’ll be fine.
Peace,
"My current game plan includes expanding exponentially in every direction as quickly and as abruptly"
Yes!
You bet, Bud. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Best of all, we determine the speed at which we wish to propel ourselves — and where we set our own course.