EVERY SO OFTEN I engage in an exercise in futility known as The Search for New Eyeglasses. It’s not that I’m picky or that I have a hard-to-fill prescription. Rather, I just can’t seem to find a pair that fits. Even before resting the glasses on my nose, I’ll notice myself stretching the frame to fit around my temples. As the optician watches in awkward silence, I’ll either say facetiously, “Who wears these?” or more honestly, “Um, these don’t seem to fit [my enormous melonhead]. Is it possible to order this style in a larger size?” The answer is inevitably no.
I am, and always will be, a big-headed person. Even as a child, I was aware that my cranium was supersized. 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. 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. In nursery school, all the children had silhouettes of their heads made from black construction paper glued on white. Mine was easy to spot as it consisted mostly of black construction paper. 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. When I was 10, I received a cowboy hat from an aunt who had been to Texas. 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. One sudden move and it was off.
Still, my mother maintains “it’s a good thing. It means you’ve got a lot of brains.” But I can’t imagine her thinking this when I was delivered as a breech baby. 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. 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.
Indeed, there are many people who can sympathize with me, even if they don’t openly acknowledge their own largeness. 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. When Oprah Winfrey suffered hair loss and needed a wig, none could be found to fit around her apparently gigantic noggin. 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. (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.)
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. 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. The experience is enough to make you demand benefits under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Except that I keep running into others with lesser craniums who think having a big head is actually a bonus.
These people suffer from big-head envy. They believe in a correlation between large-headedness and celebrity–the larger the head, the bigger the star. 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. (This could be a requirement at “60 Minutes”–after all, Steve Kroft is no pinhead either.)
Perhaps there ought to be a Big Head Society and a Big Head Hall of Fame. Besides Oprah, Morley, and Steve Kroft, there’s John Travolta, Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Trump, and Christie Brinkley, just to name a few. Why not a National Big Head Day? We could even hold a parade, though I fear it would eerily resemble a march down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. The important thing is there shouldn’t be a stigma attached to big-headedness. We big-heads should consider ourselves “specially headed.” 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.
–Victorino Matus
