Today, in the later half of November, is blue sky sunny, but from a frosty start, nippy enough air to have some folks in woolly hats, and some of the seasonal German market's security staff wearing scarves over their mouths. Temperature up to 9 then falling to 6 at sunset.
In this, in the crowd exploring the German market there were as many as 6 other folks in shorts. Both adults and kids, and from both visually apparent sides of the gender spectrum. (Well worded?) I, as an aspie with a shorts sensory issue and a metabolically active body heat, have a lot of pain baggage around a minority identity struggle that I did not get a good life start in. So to see actually what I want, the social liberty I care about doing well and advancing, carries pain. The pain of needing simple equal recognition, needing to be identified as one of the shorts favouring folks comfortable in this type of air and further.
I did not see this in my childhood/youth. Is it climate change, that more folks find days at this time of year sunnier now, hence also milder? Yet there were some folks visibly wrapped up feeling cold, and all of us shorts folks were also wearing coats. Is it this region's climate, helpful to folks finding their cold boundaries: for I have always thought that shorts are seen more and colder here in East-Central Scotland than they were in the unhappy exiled location of my childhood, South Wales. Is it the existence of the web, allowing now for anyone who doubts it to confirm that colder shorts are doable and won't give them colds. Is it a good era shift, away from the evil conformity caused by hard macho attitudes in the punk and alternative comedy eras? I grew up before the web, but after the mid-century tradition of knee-length breeches for boys had died out; and in a region affected by saturated damp air causing cold-like symptoms that prevented me until my 20s from discovering my shortist identity as a real life option; and I was never a cub because my tastes were not outdoor enough and did not at the time know they wore them; and I went to a school whose uniform was rigidly only long trousers right from above the first primary year; and the unfairly difficult older boyhood when there is an irrational age prejudice against shorts I was at exactly in the punk era when shorts were most out of fashion. Amid all that unfair hammering of circumstances, never did I see what I saw today, nor before my 20s get the opportunity to be one of the folks seen in them on this type of day at this time of year. But my soul identity has always been that I should have been.
So even if it's good right social change and to be celebrated, also it's a deep stinging oppression pain concerning life fairness. For all shortists who have been oppressed and in struggle, I have to push society and posterity to consider analysis of the causes.
Maurice Frank18 Nov 2018
