Low & Mighty

I have come to the conclusion that I am either the most common, run of the mill, Mr Average you are ever likely not to notice, or that I am an abhorrent, mutated, freak of nature.

Some of you will have already formed an opinion but hear me out, I’m going somewhere. You see the thing is, I went out at lunchtime today to look for a new suit. Nothing special, an everyday, run of the mill suit for going to work and sitting at my desk and pressing buttons and, well, we’re not here to talk about the nature of my work.

I wasn’t looking for an expensive suit, just a cheap one. The cheaper the better. So I ventured to a local large supermarket who I was confident would be able to furnish me with just the very thing.

I mean, what better place to go, with their huge square feet of retail opportunities, surely I would be spoilt for choice of colours, shapes, and sizes? Well, that is, apart from my size it would seem.

Now I don’t think I’m an unusual size, a bit short in the arm maybe, but not so much that anyone has ever mistaken me for a Velociraptor. 

However, try as I might, not one suit jacket was available in my size. If I’d been some long-armed giant I would have been well catered for. They had lots of suit jackets for these mythical massive-chested gangly creatures, but nothing for someone a bit smaller.

Let me be clear, there’s no way I can ever be described as petite either. The last shirt I bought was a medium size (a fact that had me dancing about and whooping with such glee in a changing room that other customers were concerned that I was either being attacked by a troupe of boisterous but well-meaning Vikings, or that I was having some sort of operatic-themed seizure, but that’s another story) so I’m smack-bang in the middle of average sized clothing for men of my demeanour.

So there you go, case solved, I’m Mr Average but one who’s turned up to the shop too late to get any clothes that fit him.

The thing is, as I’ve mentioned, my size has recently, well, shrunk a little. This I understand to be a good thing. After all, no-one says to you “Have you put on weight?” Well, not unless they’re an elderly relative. They seem to revel in that kind of socially challenging behaviour.

However the thing is that even when I was a little portlier around the midriff, I still struggled to find clothes. So have the rest of the country’s men shrunk with me or, well, what? 

So I have a choice. I either need to shrink further so that I am the size and shape of Yoda from Star Wars, or that I grow upwards and outwards so that I become Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

It’s hard to know which way to go, but after a recent trip to an all you can eat buffet restaurant last week I think it might be easier to slide down another “wafer thin mint” and get clothes shopping.

I can always trim the sleeves down.