One Size Fits All
One of the amusing things I saw in America was a robe with
the label, “One size fits all.” People are not of the same size.
That is why we
have sizes S, M, L, XL, and so forth. That robe I tried in a store reminded me
a story of a crocodile.
A man in Moscow liked to have things that his friends
didn’t. In Russia, we call people like him “ORIGINAL,” with the stress
on “A.” He decided to get a new pet, so a little crocodile found a new home in
the man’s one-bedroom apartment on the fifteenth floor. The man was thrilled
and couldn’t put down the shoebox with the crocodile in it. The little creature
was so cute trying to bite his finger with his tiny teeth. The friendship had
begun.
In a few weeks, the man discovered that the box became
too tight for the pet. It was time to give the box an upgrade. The crocodile
stretched in his new home but, in a few days, he hardly fit into it. The owner
found a larger box, not knowing that crocodiles grow as large as the space allows.
It is like their bodies are programmed to fit into the size of the space they
are in.
Soon, the man realized that he ran out of possible upgrades
and released his pet into the bathtub. In a few weeks, a mature animal reached
the length of the bathtub
and got out on the floor. The man heard pounding steps directed
toward his bedroom, locked himself in, opened the window and began shouting,
“POMOGITE!!!! Help, Help!!!”
Luckily, someone finally noticed him, after he had to
throw a few things out of the window, and the crocodile was taken to the Moscow
Zoo by a team of trained professionals.
The common stereotype is that Russian
women are big, but we never had people as big as in America. I heard so many times
here, “Everything is big in Texas!” but the truth is that everything is big in
America: houses, cars, dishes, clothes, and yes, people. (And now they’re
talking about widening plane seats?!)
We did have large women but they were
limited by the sizes of available clothes – our women couldn’t grow over size
2X, because beyond that size there was nothing to wear. Simple. Tiny
apartments, miniscule cars, and only small dishes in the kitchen. The body
naturally accommodates to sizes around to fill it. What a paradox! Twelve years
ago, the largest size was 4X and now, there are 7X and 8X because everything
becomes bigger: plates, portions, clothes, and seats.
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