Size matters - the disappearance of small (Installment I)

Today I went to a Starbucks cafe, something I usually manage to avoid studiously. Just a short look at their menu usually leaves me in a dithering limbo and unable to make any more decisions for the rest of the day. So many choices, and then some more! You have to keep in mind that each offering comes in a variety of forms: Which size? Which milk (non-fat, whole, soy)? Hot or cold? Frappuccino, Mocha or whatever, in what flavour? Aaaaaarg!

Now it has to be said that I am no fan of American fancy-schmancy coffees anyway. I always feel someone forgot to check up on the coffee beans while they were roasted which is the only explanation I can think of for the extremely strong smell and flavor of the coffee concoctions. I find the easiest way of copying the essence of these artisanal brews is to put on a full pot of bog standard coffee in your coffee machine and come back to check on it some 12 hours later. Can you smell that overpowering, slighly rancid aroma of coffee in the air? Take a sip - can you feel the oily liquid wrecking havoc in your stomach? Can you feel the beginning of heartburn so bad you feel the valves from your oesophagus to your stomach being eaten away? Well, then you know what I am talking about. It is obvious I am not a fan of fancy coffee. Give me any diner's coffee any day. 12 cups and counting, and I am still neither buzzed nor  suffering from overproduction of acid. Ah, the joys of dark water. But I disgress:
I was going to pontificate on the disappearance of small.

In Starbucks as in many other establishments you will not find anything small on the menu. I think it is un-American. Starbucks has its own sizing system: Tall, Grande and Venti® ( Now just imagine someone actually wanting to register the amazing word Venti. Words just fail me). A Tall coffee actually contains a whooping 0.35 litre, a Grande coffee very nearly a half litre and the Venti coffee about 0.6 litre (more than a pint!), so perhaps their reluctance to use the word "small" for their smallest offering is understandable (personally (abviously) I don't  think so. Small is the smallest thing on offer, and that's it in my books). But you better keep your nomenclature straight. Before I knew better and still frequented Starbucks and similar establishments I'd constantly run into selfimportant "barristas" (the en vogue American term for minimum wage slaves that make the coffee) which obviously need to bolster their low self esteem by being rude and constantly talking down to me because I didn't use the right words. "No, we don't serve small latte, that'd be a Tall." Who cares? Get a life! I decided to reclaim mine by avoiding the coffee houses.

I observed another, more puzzling disappearance of small in the Personal Hygiene department of my supermarket. On the lookout for some hygiene products, tampons to be exact, I found that I looked in vain for either my trusted "o.b.® comfort mini" (the smallest size) and "normal" tampons. I found Tampons galore, but the smallest size to be seen was "regular", followed by "super", "super plus" and "ultra". Now, there is no "ultra" at home. This got me thinking: Could it be that American women are, you know, anatomically different? I bought the regular ones and found, to my disappointment, that they are exactely the same size as mini-sized back home in Europe. 
I admit, it got me wondering. In this case I actually would have expected a name change in the other direction: "mini" gets to be "super mini petite" or something in that vein, but no, the American urge for bigger, better things will not even stop at unmentionables. Even though noone ever talks about their size tampon, even in locker rooms.
Have I mentioned how surprised I was at the overwhelming preponderance of tampons with applicators? on the box they tell you it is for "increased ease of insertion". That blurb must have been written by a man. Those cardboard thingies DEcrease the ease of application. But this is definitely a topic for another day.