Size matters

Tumie Modise | Monday December 12, 2016 16:50

Whether anyone likes or not, size does matter. It starts from birth, the moment a baby takes their first wail their size is going to matter. It doesn’t end there, when they crawl, when they start pre-school until they finish school, their size is always going to matter.

Then there are adults. If ever size mattered anywhere, this is where it really does! Incidentally, size matters more for males than females. It doesn’t help that men are forever comparing themselves to other males, be it in locker rooms, soccer pitches, boardrooms, you name it. They will always look around and measure themselves up against the next guy. Trump said it, even coined the new word ‘bigly’ which we all assume distinguishes men from boys in locker room lingo. For a man, masculinity is everything and they are only good or big enough when they are superior to other males, and when on that tip, sometimes they don’t concede even to Tarzan! Is Tarzan real, how would I know?

Thing is, a man with size issues is like a bomb waiting to go off anytime! Just ask any woman with such a character for a partner. Such men need constant reassurance; they are ‘touchy’ and highly emotional as well as sensitive and forever on the verge of crying or worse, strangling someone. I always avoid them, at all costs, if I may add. Just a sneeze can send them up a wall on days they are particularly feeling ‘small’.

Now the surprising thing about this is that though size is really relative, unlike women, males with size issues easily concede when they go head-to-head with other males and are ‘outsized’. Most times they even compliment and congratulate the other guy. Not so with females. Females hardly concede though the yardstick for both sexes is never the same.

Just the other day, there was a story about a homicide, where a man hacked another on issues related to size. Our courts too, half of the cases there if not all of them, have something to do with size. Jails are full of men, men who could not deal with their sizes, or rather lack thereof. Something in them snapped and before they knew it, they were behind bars.

Families too, many homes have broken up as a direct result of this size issue, mostly women end up walking out because they either cannot deal, or the men were driving them crazy constantly worrying about size.

Society as a whole fusses over size. No one ever complains about having the biggest or generous size, the ones with the smallest are the ones always complaining. Or maybe it is just human nature. Who knows, maybe Adam asked for the biggest bite too. Speaking of Adam, why do I have this feeling that the whole size thing started off with him?

We know from our day-to-day interactions that some people just don’t get it and take a long time to understand new concepts; others have great mental powers while some, well, they struggle a bit more. Individuals differ in their ability to understand new ideas, to adapt to new environments, to learn from experience, to think abstractly, to plan and to reason. Whereas a high IQ may not predispose people to be happy or to understand the finer points of dating, the highly intelligent are more likely to be found among fund managers than among check-out clerks.

Many animals are capable of sophisticated behaviours, including sensory discrimination, learning, decision-making, planning and highly adaptive social behaviours and when you think of it, they even outsmart us. What is the whole point of having big brains if your small-brained cousins outcompete you?

Having a good job preferably in a big reputable and paying institution, a big bank balance, a big house and a car with a big engine and four exhaust pipes, a big yard with plenty of space for your kids to play with their big toys, big ferocious dogs, the kind that send shivers down the spine of your neighbourhood petty thief is what everyone aspires and ultimately dreams of. Even for criminals, the size of the loot matters.

Life is all about dreaming big so yes, size does really matter. What did everybody think I was on about?