Unless you’ve kept up-to-date with recent discoveries in the field of childhood development (and who hasn’t), you will have missed the most important discovery of the last 44 years. It’s a discovery that just made my day, made my week, made my semester and actually pretty much made my life.
A report in the Oct. 11 issue of the medical journal Pediatrics showed data that actually said something positive about children with big heads.
Why am I making a big deal over something so seemingly insignificant? Great Scott, man! Look at the cartoon! Do you think that was artistic license?
It’s hard to be a big kid. It’s worse to be a big-headed kid.
For one thing, you have chronic head colds in winter because there’s so much surface area to catch a chill. And forget finding a cap or a hat that fits. My mother once tried to buy a cap for me, and the lady at the register called the produce section for a price check. Another lady asked if I came seedless.
Sports were a disaster. I made the Biddy Basketball team in fifth grade but not as a player. I couldn’t fit any helmets for football, so I was demoted to place kicker to avoid head injury (as if anyone could have injured that thing!) Daddies would take their sons to see a baseball doubleheader, and they’d end up at my house.
Elementary school itself was not much more fun. I couldn’t play hide and seek because I couldn’t hide very well. I wouldn’t play with hula-hoops because they’d pull my hair when I’d try to put them on. And the only reason I was invited to swimming parties is because parents viewed me as a safe flotation device.
I remember going to the cinema as a kid. People complained even though I sat in the back row. If you ever wonder who invented stadium seating, it’s the guy who was sitting behind me during “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Speaking of outer space, once after a lunar eclipse over my hometown in Golden Meadow, people called my parents and asked me to go out and do it again. One day in second grade, we got to act out the solar system. All the kids said I should be Jupiter. “No,” Mrs. Cheramie said. “He has to be the sun.” At least I was the center of planetary attention and closer to the blonde girl who played Venus.
The trauma for a kid with a big head has long-lasting effects.
For years I had this recurring dream I was at a birthday party in Mexico surrounded by children carrying sticks who were crying inconsolably because they couldn’t beat the candy out of my head.
Another time I dreamed I was swimming at Grand Isle and Gregory Peck tried to harpoon me; so I knocked his boat over with a snort from my blowhole.
But the worse dream I ever had was when I imagined my head was infested with lice sailing in tiny wooden boats. I heard one louse exclaim in Spanish, “It’s flat, Christopher! For God’s sake, man! Turn back!” Maybe it was Portuguese- it’s hard to tell when you’re sleeping.
Despite these long-lasting traumas, the other long-lasting effects of big-headedness in kids-according to the journal Pediatrics are increased intelligence and decreased incidence of Alzheimer disease later in life.
At this point, I’ll advise you to read the journal yourself because if I use any more neural energy to remember what I’d read I’ll put out the lights in 23 major cities.
With my painful childhood vindicated, and perhaps yours as well, l’ll leave you now. The weather has turned cold, and the squirrels are starting to bring me nuts for safekeeping.
