Auld Lang Me

Resolutions, schmesolutions. This New Year I'm relying on evolution for real change in my life. There's never been a meaningful change in my life that wasn't forced on me by circumstances at the point of gun.

My biochemistry major son would scoff at this idea. This budding scientist, know-it-all, and dedicated Darwinian has contempt not only for the creationists but the Lamarckian heretics, theorists who believe species can change in a lifetime and pass on the changes to their offspring.

This is like believing giraffes happened when a zebra ran out of grass and was forced to nibbles buds in the treetops, the boy genius scoffs. He says natural selection works nowhere near that fast.

Well, having watched this kid progress from knowing everything about his bedroom at the age of five to everything in the universe at the age of 19, I'm not so sure about that. It's like when someone breaks up with their lover and tells me, "We just grew apart," as if nothing beyond the angle of their planting caused them to cross paths in the first place, and nothing about the way they collided affected them in the slightest for good or ill.

When I married my 4'11" wife I did not immediately feel myself beginning to shrink, but my mind quickly lost the ability to bring forth the word "short" and developed an almost instantaneous predilection for "petite." For a while I would get on my knees to make eye contact, but my waddling freaked her out—she had no stomach for hot penguin love—and over time it became unnecessary. Like the zebra with his head in the treetops, my body adjusted to the demands of nature.

OK, maybe I didn't literally lose 12 inches of height. But at this time of year I do not reminisce about old times or old acquaintance as much as old long me. I'm a shape shifter, we all are, inside and out. I liked the old me, but he and all his body parts are long gone, physically, psychologically, and forever changed by time and circumstances.

Siamese twins don't become Siamese distant cousins. But you can bet they make profound individual accommodations to live with the ties that bind. Subjected to the trauma of 9/11, America quickly embraced torture and domestic surveillance; threatened by the menace of economic collapse, she voted for a black president.

The George W. Bushes of this world hold on relentlessly to their preconceived notions and existence. But throw a shoe at them after they've maintained that unremitting grip for eight long years, and you'll find that even they have learned to duck.