A Question of Scale

Short, small, measly, slight: all words which can be used to mean “less than what was expected, rather disappointing or meagre.” As I have aged, my own height has diminished by two inches, granting my childhood wish to be short like my friends. I remember my initial shock when, at thirty, I first heard Randy Newman’s satirical song, “Short People,” in which he describes their having, “little hands, little eyes. They walk around tellin’ great big lies.”Randy concludes, “Don’t want no short people ‘round here.” Newman’s song was a parody on prejudice…obviously. However, in America, where many of us take every comment as a personal attack, people jumped to be on the correct side of this issue: “Why, I myself have MANY friends who are short!” they sniffed, nostrils flared.

We haven’t learned much since the release of “Short People” in 1977. The truth is, Americans generally prefer things to be tall, big, bountiful, and over the top. We build bigger houses, purchase larger cars, expect “all-you-can-eat” portions of food and need larger sized clothes as a result. We like our music loud, insistent, and omnipresent, sharing it with others, whether they want to hear it or not. We adore sporting events and concerts which are huge spectacles and we build ever-larger stadiums in which to attend them. If we can’t be there, we have television screens that are larger than the home-movie screens of my childhood, and twice the size of the floor of my New York apartment bathrooms. 

I don’t recognize New York City these days for all the tall, faceless, rectangular glass and steel luxury sky-condos poking upwards like so many middle fingers, inappropriately dwarfing the brownstones in the neighborhood. What’s so great about towering over everything?

“Big box” stores sell us things in bulk, supposedly saving time and money which we use to shop online from home. We turn to the modern-day genie, Amazon, to grant our every wish. Big chain stores like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, once struck the death knell for family businesses, small shops, drugstores and the downtowns of America. Now, these dynostores cringe at the very mention of Amazon, the TYRANNOSTORIS which gobbles up malls, services and the media alike. We are so spoiled; we are willing to sacrifice all of the small pleasures which used to define and give meaning to our lives in the name of convenience and progress.

So before we are all sucked into the black hole of the 21st century, disappearing in the name of “bigger is better,” let us recall a few small, but powerful things:

As early as the 6th c. in Greece, Aesop employed an old folk tale about a lion and a mouse to illustrate that being the largest, the most ruthless and powerful doesn’t make one invincible. (I believe it also had a moral about being merciful, but let’s save that for another blog.)

A single drop of water seems small to us, but over time, in the right situation, it can form long pointed stalactites or stalagmites, mineral deposits often found in caves. It can also shape itself into ferocious, dagger-like icicles, beloved in Alfred Hitchcock movies as weapons.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the knight was lost. For want of the knight, the battle was lost.” Old proverb.

Throughout all of human history, people have interacted through small, important tasks. Each person was valuable in some way; a small link in the chain of humanity. When one or two countries, companies or individuals control all the things we deem necessary to live, it is time to say, as my Nanna would, “They are growing too BIG for their britches.”