Sizing It All Up

I was involved in a curious conversation earlier today. My Dad had purchased a box of shells (a kind of pasta) to cook for supper this evening. However, he mistakenly purchased a box of large shells, as opposed to a box of jumbo shells (jumbo being about twice the size of the large). He pointed out that the name of the size was somewhat misleading and only if you're looking really closely can you tell the difference (personally, I needed a side-by-side comparison to really appreciate the difference).

This event struck a chord with me and Mom, who earlier this week had had a similar conversation, that time discussing the sizes of coffee beverages. Tall, grande, venti. To an outside observer (such as myself, who doesn't drink coffee) these names seem unclear and arbitrary. None give any particular indication as to how much volume a cup in these respective sizes would occupy. The names seem as though they were made up (or borrowed from other sources) as the name-assigner went along.

It seems like most everyone has their own system of how to do things and how to measure things. What means one size by one system means something else entirely in another system. Certainly, it would probably smooth things out if a single system was applied as the standard, but fat chance of that ever happening! The United States stubbornly refuses to use the Metric System, even though nearly every other country in the world uses it. Apparently, we had it for about a week, back in the Seventies, before quickly discarding it. I wonder how much of that stems from the idea of, "We've been using this system for so long now, and it still works just fine, so why should we change now?"

I suppose the lesson here (if there is one to be learned) is to pay attention to the details when not familiar with something, or even when familiar with something.