I finally got my COVID stimulus check in the mail, and the weather being so nice, I decided to head over to Walmart and buy some new shorts. I already have an old pair, khaki colored, but I thought, with summer coming on, I would look good in white or maybe a pastel. Pale yellow? Light turquoise?
When I got there, they had a few color choices, but I couldn’t find the right waist size. Apparently, a bunch of people with my identical measurements had received their stimulus check before me and staged a run on pastel-colored shorts. (I didn’t even look at the khaki shorts, because, like I said, I already had a pair of those.)
But the money was burning a hole in my pocket, so I started shopping for things I didn’t need. And there, just around the corner from the polo shirts, was a display of cloth COVID masks, in a colorful array. Flower patterns, camouflage, solids, corporate logos, cartoon characters. The sign above the display said, “One Size, Fits All.”
Which got me to thinking about a world where one size fits all.
Like for example, the coronavirus. I’ve heard that the virus that’s currently making its way around the world and back again, measures about 0.125 microns, which seems like a really small size. About 500 hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair. Like, tiny.
But amazingly, one size fits all. A little newborn baby, and a 300-pound football lineman with the Denver Broncos. A penniless man living in a homeless shelter in Seattle, and a millionaire lobbyist living in a penthouse in Washington DC. The coronavirus fits quite comfortably inside everyone. (Comfortable for the virus, but not for the person.)
And since we are now putting billionaire Bill Gates and myself on the same level playing field, equally suited for a COVID infection, let’s talk about beer. When Bill Gates buys a six-pack of beer, he gets the same size bottles as I get. 12 ounces. And we both get the same number of bottles. Six. So it’s not just the coronavirus that’s “one size fits all.” That applies to so many things. Like oranges, for example. And that gave me a warm feeling. Knowing that the oranges I eat are the same size as the oranges Bill Gates eats. And that we can both be infected by the same tiny virus.
Yes, I realize there’s a very good reason to manufacture pastel-colored shorts in a variety of waist sizes, and that we need both newborn babies and 300-pound linemen. But is there a good reason for Bill Gates to have $100 billion in his bank account, while I am saving my pennies to buy a six-pack? I decided there really isn’t a good reason.
What if our world truly embraced “one size fits all”? What if we all earned, say, $25 an hour? The essential worker stocking the racks at Walmart, and the lobbyist in Washington DC? The guy picking the oranges, and the CEO of Google. I imagine a world like that, and it seems — in my imagination — to solve so many problems.