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As I boy I loved to watch the squirrels flatten their tiny bodies to squeeze underneath our backyard’s wooden-slat fence. I wished to be able to make myself small like that, to compress my body to fit into even the tiniest of spaces, though the other boys and girls where playing at police officer and doctor, roles larger than their still growing bodies could inhabit. Now that I’m older, and larger, I still retain my adolescent desire to become small, but only in the ways that matter. Sure, it’s nice to be tall enough to see over the pharmacy counter when I pick up the pills I need for living. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to shrink my stomach to fit into the pants I bought last October, before my paunch had become so prominent. I’m old enough to know that being small is not all it’s cracked up to be, that in time my aging body will shrivel and hunch so I can no longer reach the cans of baked beans stowed on the top shelf of the pantry. Maybe then I will fit into those pants, though they’ll have long gone out of style. I’ll probably have donated them, or packed them away in a cardboard box forgotten at the back of the closet. Then one day I’ll remember. Those pants! And because it’s raining outside, and I’ve nothing better to do, TV’s a bore and I’ve read all the books on my bookshelf, I’ll go in search of them. I’ll run the boxcutter across the brittle packing tape, and when I lift back the folds, I’ll find the box filled with acorns. Not a lion’s share, not a king’s treasure hoard, but enough I’ll live another winter, growing smaller and smaller until, pop, I vanish.