January 27, 2004
Big Is Big... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
I remember a graduate course I once took in Numerical Methods that was both complex and mind-boggling. To be truthful, I really understood very little, but I realize now that I came away with something very important.
One day, as class was beginning and I was steeling myself to take copious, if incomprehensible, notes, the notoriously taciturn Professor strode through the door and hefted his old-fashioned briefcase, as usual, onto the table next to the lectern. Instead of pulling out his time-tested and curled lecture notes, to which he would refer while scrawling his way across three blackboards, on that particular day he did something different - he took out a tiny children's book.
He said, "I was reading to my son last night, and I was so amazed. This is such an important book. And now, I shall read it to you."
--
He held up the pages, and read aloud. "Big is big," and showed us the drawing of an elephant. He turned the page, and read, "And small is small." And we saw the picture of a pussy cat. He read, "Sometimes big can be small." And we saw a baby elephant featured alongside his mother. "And sometimes small can be big." And there was a mother cat beside her tiny kitten. Up and down the animal kingdom the story took us through every turn of big and small you could imagine.
My professor was delirious with pleasure, occasionally shaking the book to make a particular point. And when he finished, he solemnly closed the book, and said, "And so it is with numbers. Big is big, and small is small. But you can always get bigger, and always get smaller." And then he took off into negative numbers and theories of infinity, and I was lost again, but the point was made.
This memory has been stashed away in my brain for several decades now, and finally I see his point.
--
I read everything possible related to why more and more Americans have become fatter and, in some cases, obese. There's plenty out there to think about - from the fast food premise to the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup.
Part of my interest has been fueled by a creep in my own poundage, although, amazingly, I really haven't changed size all that much. To date, I've been assuming some phenomenon of age-related re-arrangement of assets - the same old size, but with a different cut, shall we say.
And now, in my weight-related reading, I find out that the meaning of a size has changed. Over the last twenty years, today's standard size 12 has become what was an old-fashioned size 16. The truth is our clothes have expanded around us, and we didn't even know it. For heaven's sake, who would lose weight, if they're still wearing the same size?
If we want to do something about the increased poundage in America, we'd better bite the bullet and freeze those sizes. And why? Because the number stamped on the inside of our clothes means something. It tells our psyche whether or not we're at an appropriate weight. Besides, any woman can tell you: Big is big, and small is small, and sometimes big is small, and small is big.
Thank you, Dr. Lynch, wherever you are.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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