Our Shrinkng Earth

Einstein’s Theory of the Shrinking Earth

I want to take you back to my childhood environment – our backyard.  I have already talked to the impact global warming has had on the yard, but there is a more subtle, more heinous force at work – Global Shrinkage.

Einstein postulated that the earth was shrinking at an ever increasing rate until such time as the occupants ceased to grow.  Well, he might never have said that, but he should have as I have witnessed this horrid phenomenon in what used to be our huge backyard.  I was talking to brother o’ Phos when the matter first came to my attention.  It left me very shaken and wondering when the government would step in and give us obscene amounts of relief money so we could press on with our lives.  That’s what governments are for, to bail your ass out when things go terribly wrong, even if you built your house below sea level in hurricane country.

My brother and I used to play football in that backyard, fight epic battles against the Allies, and have home run derbies.  To win the home run derby, you had to knock a wiffle ball over the hedge, which seemed a country mile away. It was tough to do. My brother and his friends held bike races up and down the hills and mowing those hills reminded me of the Paul Bunyan story where his lumberjacks were logging on a hill and the down hill leg grew longer then the uphill leg.  

I went home to visit (I still consider the place home) and to my amazement the backyard had shrunk.  The hills weren’t the mountain slopes they seemed when we were pulling the sled back to the top for another run.  Homerun derbies would be way too easy because the neighbor’s yard had suddenly grown closer to ours and the hedge was gone.  It doesn’t help that the small trees were now giants of the forest, including the pines the nursery told my father wouldn’t grow above six feet (they lied).  Trees notwithstanding, I do believe Einstein’s possible postulation is in full effect here and the backyard has shrunk. I expect one day to return and find it gone all together.  That would be a shame because my brother and I had so much fun in the yard.