The Incredible Shrinking Man

When I was born more than sixty years ago, I was very short. I’m basing this on photos I’ve seen of myself as a baby. Since then, not much has changed. Except I’m getting shorter.

At my peak, I stood at a towering sixty-four inches! For those of you mathematically impaired, that works out to five feet, four inches, or roughly the height of today’s average fourth-grader. But those days are gone and now I am slowly shrinking.

Six decades of gravity will do that to a person, but apparently not to all people. My wife, who had a couple inches on me to start with, must have made a deal with the devil, because the same number of decades of Earth’s gravitational pull doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on her. Sure her boobs are hanging a bit lower than they were when we met; but that, she tells me in that sweet, loving voice of hers, HAPPENS TO EVERY FUCKING WOMAN!!! I’ll have to take her word for it as the only other fully developed sets of breasts I’ve ever seen have belonged to Hollywood actresses willing to bare their tits for the sake of art, Playboy centerfolds willing to bare all for a shot at being one of Hef’s girlfriends and porn starlets willing to have amazingly large things inserted into various not quite as large orifices for remarkably large amounts of cash. But nearly all of these young women have been caught on camera pre-boob-sag and/or post-surgical enhancement. Either way, god bless ‘em.

But I digress. The point is, my wife stands every bit as tall now as she did the day nearly forty years ago I stood on my tippy-toes, looked up into her beautiful blue eyes and said “I do” to the statuesque, young beauty. Meanwhile, since that day I have gradually shriveled to a slightly taller version of Yoda.

This development has made buying clothes a fruitless and frustrating exercise. Sure, stores have sections to cater to shoppers who aren’t built right. For instance, the lady who hasn’t yet dropped that excess baby fat or those excess gallons of Hagen Das, can go to the Plus-Size section and find clothes designed to make her look and feel like she’s only a month of Jenny Craig and a bottle of cooking oil away from slipping back into that honeymoon bikini she has stuffed at the bottom of the dresser drawer.

For men who are big and tall, there is a section cleverly named Big and Tall where I assume they can find clothes to satisfy their bigness and tallness. That’s nice for all the overgrown behemoths who seem to be taking over our country, but where the fuck is the Short and Dumpy section? The shortest inseam I have ever been able to find is 29 inches, which, it seems only comes with a 46-inch or larger waist. That’s great if you’re buying a pair of pants for a beach ball. If I were to have a daily intake of a box of Dunkin Donuts for, say, a year, I’d be stylin’. Or I suppose I could go the other way and drop fifty pounds and shop in the Boys (4-12) section.

And shorts? Those weren’t a problem back in the good old days before men displaying their knees in public was outlawed by rappers and street thugs. Back then, I could find a nice pair of shorts with legs that came down to about an inch or so below my balls—long enough to keep me from getting arrested but short enough to keep me from looking like a double amputee.

But it’s not all bad news. Gravitational pull affects all parts of the human body; now my legs are only a tad longer than my penis, which means I won’t get so frustrated when shopping for clothes.

Wearing a pair of shorts that don’t hang down to my ankles is no longer an option.