Change can be painful in a myriad of ways. This is especially true if the change occurs without your knowledge or input.

I think most people probably believe that change is inevitable if not desirable, at least in theory. That said, in practice, change is not something us humans really enjoy. 

I’m not really a status-quo endorser, but sometimes things should be left as is because improvement is unwarranted. For instance, for many years I enjoyed the comfort, low price and reliability of GAP boxer shorts. 

These were essentially the perfect male undergarment, requiring little in the realm of maintenance as they functioned perfectly inside out when laundry was not an option. The important engineering marvel of these boxers was the seamless behind, preventing the publicly embarrassing and downright uncomfortable wedgie. 

Requiring a few replacements to fill my dresser drawer, I strolled into the GAP, hoping to secure a few new pairs of finely tailored undies. To my chagrin the boxers were nowhere to be found. 

Utterly vexed by the whole debacle, I approached one of the irritating sales representatives to inquire where I could secure a large quantity of seamless-butt-boxers at a reasonable price. He told me, somewhat surprised by my devotion to an undergarment, that they had been discontinued. 

Dejected, I headed for the exit, pondering the fate of my current cache of supreme boxers, never to enter the GAP again. How long would they last? I asked myself. How many washes would they stand up to? Why change perfection?

Needless to say, I wore those soft fig-leaves until there was little left except for the elastic waist band. 

Now I’m not trying to gross-out our readership, but last Thursday was laundry day, which coincided with Barack Obama’s journey north of the 49th parallel. The fact that Obama has essentially labeled himself ‘Mr. Change’ got me thinking about personal and country-wide change as I began folding my newer, less comfortable boxer shorts. 

I was forced to change to a product, which based on a few years of arduous stress tests, I can confidently proclaim is inferior. Now seeing that the ‘new product’ the whole world is about to consume is change, we ought to decide if it’s a change in a beneficial way, especially for Canada. As Winston Churchill said, “there is nothing wrong with change if it is in the right direction.”

I’ve changed my hairstyles over the years. From a rat-tail to a mullet to long hair and finally a brush cut, the most refined, but audacious of coifs. My changes in hair styles have also followed and embodied, coincidentally or not, changes in the US Presidency. From Bush Sr., to ‘Bubba’ Clinton, to Bushy Jr. and last but not least, Obama. 

Scores of people lined the streets of Ottawa on Thursday just to get a glimpse of the new American President. As a side note, I couldn’t help but feel a bit shameful about the royal treatment that a foreign leader receives given the complete indifference our leaders receive. Although, maybe that’s because Harper’s hair is more of a helmet-head and he is definitely a tighty-whities kind of guy. 

Canadians should treat Obama with skepticism, as sort of buyer-beware policy. We need to see how he – like my new underwear before him – acts during times of great stress and consequence. The words of one of the greatest comics of the twentieth-century seem prescient at this time. “I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed!” said George Carlin. 

Alberta is likely to see the greatest affects of US-Canada policy changes, especially in the environmental domain. Tar sands oil is labeled dirty oil – although isn’t all oil dirty? – and the new Obama administration has been sending signals that the US may no longer be looking north of the border when it comes to filling their motorcades with relatively cheap gasoline. 

Environmentalists may see Obama putting pressure on Alberta to clean up its act as positive – and it is – but if the US cuts off oil imports from Canada, it’s more than likely that our current government in Ottawa will just begin selling more oil to China and India, some of the world’s biggest polluters. 

Obama may try to put Canada in tighty-whities, hampering economic development in the tar sands, but the longer we feel constricted and the more public admonishments we find in our undies, we’ll head to the laundromat, washing away the stains to our national pride, but more importantly (and unfortunately), washing away the optimism that greeted Obama this past week. 

So before we as Canadians expect that Obama is going to change everything for the better, keep in mind that switching to a new detergent can cause a nasty rash.