Sep 21, 2006

Helmets & Chins

I saw two odd things walking to work this morning.

One, I have seen every day for sometime. There's this mother who walks away from Broadway every morning as I walk towards it. She has a son, who is probably about a year and a half. He wears a helmet. Every day. It's an odd helmet--it's white, and has holes, so that it really only covers the top of the right eyebrow and the upper back of the neck. I assumed that the baby had some kind of head-shape abnormality, and the helmet was corrective (my kid sister was forced to wear casts on her feet when she was baby. She would kick them off in her sleep. They were entirely pointless).

However, today for the first time I noticed that this stroller was one of those double strollers, and that there was another baby underneath! A six-month-old girl! And guess what? She too had a helmet! Now, my limited research did not suggest that this flat-head tendency was so genetically strong that it would appear in siblings--in fact, it seems to be caused by being squashed in the uterus. Do you suppose this mother is just really scared of Broadway?

My next intriguing sight is actually somewhat similar--if some babies have oddly shaped heads, I think we can all agree that some adults have oddly shaped chins. Or, more specifically, no chins at all. I shared an elevator this morning with a chinless man.

This fellow was in the process of growing a beard. Now, we all know what a difference a beard can make--Sean Connery with beard and Sean Connery without are two entirely different people. So it is indeed possible that a long enough beard will compensate for any lack of chin, and in fact make it appear as though a chin were indeed present. But this guy had a long way to go. At the moment it was chinless stubble, so stubble on neck and cheeks, and just made things worse.

I do recognize that as there are no chin-growth-promoting helmets available, people without chins have to do the best they can on their own. I wish this man the best of success.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

was it Paul Giamatti?