Using Your Head

There are few events in a person’s life that will forever be remembered.  These occasions always remain vivid in the mind no matter how many years go by and how many new memories are formed.  If we are lucky, these fragments of the past can help shape us into who we will be in the future.  My first life-changing moment occurred during my third holiday season in this world.  It was at that time I learned that when things get tough, the best thing you can do is use your head.

Christmas Day of 1986 was a wonderfully happy day for me.  I was surrounded by family, and even more importantly, I was surrounded by presents.  Santa Claus had been good to me that year, or at least I am pretty sure that he had.  At the age of three, I was barely old enough to understand that the gifts themselves held much more excitement than their boxes.  One thing I did understand, though, was that Santa Claus had come.  Any doubt that I may have had that the jolly man existed was gone, because the night before, I had become a legend.  Out of all of the children in the entire world, I had behaved the best and got my presents first.   

Before I understood certain concepts like that of the time zone, this all made perfect sense to me.  On Christmas Day, however, my godfather was not nearly as excited about my good fortune as I had been.  I still remember the excitement in my voice as I hurriedly told him that Santa visited me first because I was the greatest kid in the world.  I regrettably also remember the sarcastic smirk he gave me as he muttered the words, “Well someone’s big-headed.” 

At that time, his words had astonished me.  I couldn’t believe that he would say such a thing.  The next night I spent minutes, which translates into hours during child years, staring into the mirror.  As far as I could tell, my head was in proportion to the rest of my body.  There was nothing big about it.  For the life of me, I could not see what he had seen.  Something had to be done to prove that I was right and that I didn’t have an over-developed cranium. 

Sitting below the purple canopy on my bed, I construed the first experiment that I would ever conduct.  For several more minutes, I traced the outlines of the Pound Puppy faces on my brand new miniature TV tray while I thought about my situation.  In my newly found knowledge, it occurred to me that I could prove my godfather wrong by conducting an experiment to calculate the actual size of my head in relation to another object.  Of course, at the time the actual thought was something like, “A big head won’t fit in a little hole.”  Unfortunately for the child-sized Pound Puppies tray, the closed-in legs on the bottom of it were just the right size for my experiment.

With the infinite wisdom I had acquired in the first three years of my life, I picked up the lap tray and stuck my head through the boxed-in metal legs.  When my head slid through with ease, I was immediately proud.  It was official; I was a genius.  My mission had been successful, and I had proved that my head could not be that big.  The only problem was that ears only really bend in one direction, so getting the tray off of my neck was impossible.  When it came to that situation, it was not a problem; it was a catastrophe.  My new favorite Christmas present was holding me captive, and there was not a thing that could be done about it.  At that age, there were very few things that could be considered worse.       

Shaking in trepidation, I opened my bedroom door and quietly said my mother’s name.  She had been sitting in the den at the time, talking to her sister on the phone.  My parents owned their own business, so there were certain rules involving phone interruptions.  I knew that there were only two conditions that would make it acceptable for me to interrupt.  The first was if there was a fire.  The second was if blood was involved.  Since I was not in fact bleeding and I certainly was not stupid enough to set the house on fire, I was deeply conflicted as to whether or not my interruption would be breaking the phone rules.  Leaning against our fabulous 1970’s metallic wallpaper, I decided that my situation definitely constituted an emergency, albeit a unique one. 

This time when I said my mother’s name, I said it much louder.  She asked me if it was an emergency, and I told her I was pretty sure that it was.  While I heard her putting my aunt on hold, I scooped myself off of the rust colored carpet and stepped into her doorway.  We stared at each other for a moment, or a child year.  There was really nothing that either of us could say.  I’m still not sure of whether my mother wanted to laugh, cry, or take a picture at that very instant.  I think that she handled it well.  Still trying to understand what had made me stick my head through a TV tray, she did everything in her power to free my neck.  Sadly, my ears still stood stubbornly and the tray was officially stuck.

At that point, my mother had to do the inevitable and call my father.  It was a Saturday night, and that meant that it was poker time.  There are few things that are important enough to make a man walk away from a big poker game.  I now know that a phone call saying that his child’s head is firmly planted between the legs of a TV tray will do the trick.  Still not quite sure of what had actually happened, my father rushed home to find me sitting on his bed with several pairs of wide eyes staring at him.  Between my expression and the looks of the dogs on the tray, we definitely had the puppy dog eyes covered.

Feeling very similar to the way my mother must have felt, my father jiggled the tray this way and that.  It, of course, did not budge.  Thankfully, my father had tricks that I could not have imagined.  His tricks involved a saw, a flashlight, and a lot of faith in himself.  As if he were slicing through a loaf of bread, he easily sawed away the tray. When it fell off my neck, I felt as if I had just been released from a week in the stocks.  In one shot, my father had granted me my freedom and officially became my hero. 

That day, I learned quite a few lessons.  First, never underestimate the power of a man and his tools.  Secondly, tributes to Pound Puppies are best kept as stuffed animals rather than pieces of furniture.  Third, I learned that when you don’t know what to do, it is best to simply use your head.  Finally, I thankfully learned to never again do that in the literal sense.