Casual
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD Every so often I engage in an exercise in futility known as The Search for New Eye-i glasses. It's not that I'm picky or that I have a hard-to-fill prescription....
...Except that I keep running into others with lesser craniums who think having a big head is actually a bonus...
...When one friend (and believer in this correlation) met with Morley Safer of 60 Minutes, he swore it was like talking to a Bobble Head...
...Why not a National Big Head Day...
...You would also think after more than 20 years my friends would have exhausted the big-head jokes—yet even to this day they get in their digs...
...Still, my mother maintains "it's a good thing...
...I will never forget the snapping of the rubber band as I tried to fit on a plastic mask for my kindergarten's Halloween party...
...But you know who you are: tall-heads, pumpkin heads, conicals, and those who look normal until you notice that the back of their head extends to neolithic proportions...
...The experience is enough to make you demand benefits under the Americans With Disabilities Act...
...In fact, we should stand up and demand our rights—to be able to wear yarmulkes without pins, berets that don't look like skull caps, Burger King crowns that don't rip apart at your birthday party, and, yes, even eyeglasses that fit...
...Besides Oprah, Morley, and Steve Kroft, there's John Travolta, Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Trump, and Christie Brinkley, just to name a few...
...I got in but couldn't get out, until the owners of the house used crowbars to pry the wrought-iron rails wide enough for my extraction, amid tears and panic...
...When I do find glasses that wrap fully behind my ears and don't squeeze my temples, they are usually of the Brett Somers-cataract variety, weighing about a half-pound...
...We big-heads should consider ourselves "specially headed...
...In nursery school, all the children had silhouettes of their heads made from black construction paper glued on white...
...Perhaps there ought to be a Big Head Society and a Big Head Hall of Fame...
...When Oprah Winfrey suffered hair loss and needed a wig, none could be found to fit around her apparently gigantic noggin...
...I called football equipment manufacturer Riddell, and they assured me their state-of-the-art Revolution Helmet is now available in extra-large—up to 26 inches—for an additional $15...
...At age 3, I took my sister's dare and stuck my head between the banister rails—after all, she was older than I and did it with ease...
...Not me...
...But I can't imagine her thinking this when I was delivered as a breech baby...
...When I was 10, I received a cowboy hat from an aunt who had been to Texas...
...These people suffer from big-head envy...
...So I know I'm not alone in the discovery, at one optical store after another, that the coolest frames are all made for a head that would fit nicely inside my own...
...Rather, I just can't seem to find a pair that fits...
...As the optician watches in awkward silence, I'll either say facetiously, "Who wears these...
...This could be a requirement at 60 Minutes —after all, Steve Kroft is no pinhead either...
...Just two years ago there was the story of Tyler Money, a 6-foot-1, 285-pound high school freshman who wanted desperately to play football but couldn't because there wasn't a helmet big enough for him—Money's head is 26 inches in circumference...
...Even as a child, I was aware that my cranium was supersized...
...The important thing is there shouldn't be a stigma attached to big-headedness...
...The answer is inevitably no...
...One sudden move and it was off...
...I am, and always will be, a big-headed person...
...They believe in a correlation between large-headedness and celebrity—the larger the head, the bigger the star...
...Indeed, there are many people who can sympathize with me, even if they don't openly acknowledge their own largeness...
...It means you've got a lot of brains...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...Is it possible to order this style in a larger size...
...or more honestly, "Um, these don't seem to fit [my enormous melonhead...
...Even before resting the glasses on my nose, I'll notice myself stretching the frame to fit around my temples...
...Mine was easy to spot as it consisted mostly of black construction paper...
...But rather than turning me into a cowboy, the hat made me feel like one of those beauty pageant contestants who balances books on her head as she sashays down a runway...
...Not that having a big head was much of an issue in school— either because I joked about it myself or, more plausibly, because my friends had loved ones who shared my peculiar condition...
...We could even hold a parade, though I fear it would eerily resemble a march down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras...
Vol. 9 • February 2004 • No. 20
