That Old Phrenology

So I'm sitting across the conference table listening to his pitch and all I can think is:  This man has the tiniest head ever.  How did he manage to fit two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth onto that tiny sphere?  And he's tall and broad-shouldered, which just makes his head look even smaller.  Is there anything you can wear to make your head look bigger?  Maybe a pin-striped cap or a high-collared shirt, the sort that knickerbocker guy used to wear on the cover of The New Yorker? 

Whatever, he's not helping himself with his haircut:  you'd think a tiny-headed guy would sport a huge head of hair but no, he's got it cut so close you can see his scalp.  Maybe he once had long bushy hair and he went to the barber and said cut it all off, my good man, I'm going to be clean-cut from now on, and afterwards, when the barber spun him around to face the mirror, he emitted a blood-curdling scream as he saw his shrunken head for the first time.  He immediately assumed the barber had been too eager with the razor, slicing away a little skin and scalp, but the absence of blood, tissue and bone on the hair-covered shawl and floor confirmed instead that his long and bushy hair had, for years, hidden the tiniest head ever. 

You don't often see women with tiny heads.  Perhaps they are better at hiding it with hair.  Or perhaps tiny heads look better on women, so you see them but don't notice them, if you know what I mean.

Maybe my massive head skews my perspective on this, for I am usually the first to notice a tiny head.  Right now I'm sitting across the table staring at this guy's head and doing some quick volume calculations and figuring that you could fit two of that guy's heads into my skull, and have room left over for extra memory or brain fluid or what have you.  I glance around the room but no one else is staring at this microscopic talking head.  Perhaps they are more polite than me, but then I am always the first one to tell you when you've got spinach in your teeth or something is dangling from your nose, so it could just be that I'm more observant, that I can spot a head so tiny that the unassisted human eye can't see it.

I'm kidding.  His head isn't that small.  But it is the tiniest head ever.

In college I had a roommate with the biggest head ever.  We once measured it with calipers.  Then with tape.  I don't remember the exact volume, but he bet someone that his head was the biggest head ever and I remember we spent a few weeks measuring people's heads with the calipers and the tape until the other guy conceded and my roommate won the bet. 

My roommate's head was a flat-sided cube, its Frankensteinian right-angled edges giving him that extra volume that makes all the difference.  My head, by contrast, is a more conventional upside-down egg shape, perhaps more rectangular than most, and definitely more top-heavy than your average head.  Not nearly as evenly-balanced as my roommate's head.  But almost as big.  My volume secret?  The little pitched roof at the top, a/k/a The Point, currently hidden under hair, just waiting to be uncovered one balding day. 

The weight of my roommate's head no doubt explained the absence of his neck; only his shoulders could keep that block aloft.  I, on the other hand, must balance my enormous pointy head atop a tiny pencil neck, an effect akin to that of a bobble-head doll.

Anyways, my blockheaded roommate had a theory, a new phrenology he called it, that one's intelligence was positively correlated with one's head size.  He compiled the volume data we collected for the bet and sure enough the smartest people were clustered at the top of the list.  I suggested further testing these results with my theory, developed in sixth grade, that neat penmanship is negatively correlated with intelligence, but by this time everyone had lost interest in the whole head thing.

Mr. Tiny Head stops speaking and we all stand up and I shake his regular-sized hand and stare at his head one last time, marveling at how miniaturization can pack so much into so little.  Next to his sleek head, my clunker looks like last year's model.

Later as I'm filling out his evaluation I'm debating what to say about the head.  Should I just come out and say it?  I bet no one else will.  It's the spinach in the teeth again.  I can even back up my conclusions by citing my roommate's study, but it is unpublished and I don't remember what happened to the working draft. 

Or should I just keep quiet about the head?  You never know who might read the evaluation, perhaps one of my small-headed colleagues or maybe someone with a strong sense of social justice who, looking at my behemothic bean, will conclude that I'm a raging headist. 

Comments

[DarkoV]

Always at the forefront, or should I say, the forehead front, of cultural/social dilemnas, aren't you? Casting aside the traditional, i.e. outmoded and shunned, measures of differentiation such as race, height, weight, sexual preference, and fashion stylings, you've embarked on headism. While being diplomatic and self-deprecating (which will always work in the acceptance of uncomfortable truths), you've now introduced another bias that graduating law school students will be able to take to court and thus be able to earn their keep. Their future children thank you for their parents' livelihood; headistically speaking.

[puddleglum]

perhaps with a lot of hair on his scalp, his features would be lost completely. it sounds as if they are already competing for any attention, being on such a small point of focus, but if you surrounded that by a large, full, relatively attractive head of hair the eyes, ears, nose, and other facial features would be overwhelmed. Thus, while the close hair cut does emphasize his small head, it also allows him to have a face, and not have his face come across as a new type of where's waldo picture?

[Misspent]

There is a guy that use to be on the same flights as me every week. He was a very, very skinny fellow. Skinny and narrow. His head was small, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the smallest head ever. I would say that it may be the most narrow head ever. It was shaped like an axe. He was generally somewhat fightmaking.

[Kris]

My little son, ten years of age, has told me that he thinks his head is "sware and wumpy." Yes, he has a speech impediment. And terrible, almost unreadable handwriting.

He was just privately tested by an M.D., Ph.D in child psychology for all sorts of learning disabilities. The doc even mentioned his rather "large" head. Final result: no disabilities, just a 153 - 165 IQ.

[Outer Life]

Darko -- You know me, I'm just a troublemaker.

Puddleglum -- What about a pompadour? That would leave his tiny facial features uncovered while adding bulk and depth and volume to his head.

Misspent -- I used to think all babies were beautiful. Then I saw one with a hatchet face and realized I was wrong.

Kris -- My big-headed college roommate is brilliant & successful & has the worst handrwriting you ever did see. I predict great things for your little large-headed prodigy.