Even a Quarter Inch Makes a Huge Difference

Even a Quarter Inch Makes a Huge Difference

So Sandra Bullock is in a movie some years ago.  It’s about a cop who goes undercover as a beauty queen to catch somebody who’s trying to blow up beauty queen pageants, or something (I forget).  Naturally other than being pretty (we are led to assume) Sandra Bullock (in this role) is not much of a girly girl.  She needs help learning to be girly girl.

Cut to the important part  this pageant consultant is brought in and he’s teaching her to walk like a girly girl pageant entrant – on the streets of New York (of course – it has to be New York for the humor to work).  She’s focused on her hip-swinging walk and a cabby almost hits her in a crosswalk.  She pounds on the hood of his cab and yells at him, “Hey, assehole! I’m sachéin’ here-ya!”  (New Yo-ark accent)

My point being that sometimes when we’re really focused on something, something that takes us out of our normal daily experience we can put ourselves in some ridiculous situations.  Not so much dangerous as, “What’s happening?  Huh?” situations.

Every couple of weeks I have to take the household trash to the dump; known here as the “Convenience Center”.  (Sidenote:  when did it become a politically correct issue not use the word dump anymore?  Convenience Center ?  But that’s another topic …) I have to drive my old pick-up truck.  My truck is a short cab long bed rear wheel drive old thing.  This means it has no traction when there is nothing in the back. 

It will fish-tail around and refuse to climb a two percent grade if there is a quarter inch of wet leaves on the road.  I mean just maybe a layer of wet leaves three leaves deep.  ‘sssreeer!  Sssreeer!”  on a just wet leaves.  I fill the truck bed with a dozen trash garbage bags, which don’t weigh much since they’re mostly empty frozen pizza boxes and banana peels.  Maybe some coffee grounds and used teabags.  Not heavy enough to help put any traction on the rear axle.

An’ I can’t get the damn truck to climb the tiny little incline getting up the driveway from the house.  “Hey assehole! I’m tryin’ to get to the damn dump here-ya.”

 One other place where a quarter of an inch makes a huge difference is when a person becomes bald.  As in the case of a male person, with the pattern bald genome, approaching his elder years.  As in the case of himself, or me, as it were.  Rather than let my hair grow and look like I’m wearing a cheap clown wig, I buzz it down to nearly a Mr. Clean.  Not shaved, but nearly.

Every time it gets long enough to pinch, like an Army recruit cut, I buzz it again.  I’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years.  Lately as I’ve added those twenty years to my life span I have noticed that for almost a week after each new buzz cut, my head, and therefore the rest of me, feels cold – all day long!  Even a dusting, a quarter inch,  of hair when it concerns your scalp makes that much of a difference to your sense of comfort.

And when a person approaches those elder years, that sense of comfort becomes more and more of a big deal.