"Anybody ever tell you, you gotta big head?"

       As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I have been told over the course of my lifetime, that I do indeed, have a big head.

        It started at a pretty young age, when my mother started to notice that it was getting difficult to buy hats for me. As a small child, I'd had lots of hats, but around middle school, it became apparent that hat shopping was not going to be a huge part of my life. Slowly it became harder to find me a baseball cap that didn't look ridiculous, and by the time high school rolled around, the only hats my head would even pretend to wear with comfort were those shapeless knitted winter hats (think burglar hats), and the occasional beret. Then came the event that solidified it in my mind, had there still been any doubt. The World Series, when I was in the 10th grade.

       For several reasons, I had decided rather randomly that I cared about baseball now. Specifically, I cared about the Yankees beating the Red Sox. Could have been because we girls were all obsessed with our teacher, and he was a diehard Sox fan, who knows? Nonetheless, I took my babysitting money off to the mall, to buy a reeeeal Yankee cap. Where else to go but Hat World? I decided to be open with the gentleman helping me, so I said,

"Hi...I want a Yankee cap, but I need the biggest one you have-the largest size!"

(too many times had I been burned by "One size fits all"-how about one size fits NORMIES)

He obliged me, and brought out a large men's size cap. It perched atop my head like an urban fruit basket, and no further. He sighed quizzically, and brought out "The biggest hat we have-will fit ANYBODY-is elastic!!"

     I should have known what was coming, but I eagerly took the hat, and optimistically put it on.

It would not go on. IT. WOULD NOT. GO ON. This elastic-banded, deliberately big hat was not going to go on my head. I took it from atop my bird's nest-ahhhh hair, and handed it back to the salesman, who then gave me a piece of advice I would never forget.

"There is no hat for you. No hat in the world!"

       Seeing as this was coming from the man who ran "Cap World" I took it to heart, and only occasionally after that tortured myself by trying on hats that I knew wouldn't fit. Then came the horseback riding.

        I hadn't been in years, and so when I went a few years ago on the way back from a wedding in Pennsylvania, I rightly figured that to go on a two hour trail ride through the woods, I ought to wear a helmet. I pre-signed a form saying that I was ok riding without one despite risk, in case the helmets didn't fit, and followed the drawling ranch worker out towards the horses and helmets. Because I told him of my head, he sauntered past the smalls and mediums, which were actual horseback riding helmets, and stopped in front of the largest, which were simply bike helmets. You'd think they'd fit just about anyone.

      I tried it with the pads still in. Nope. He took them out, and placed the helmet back on me. Nothing. Finally, he and his mullet looked down at me and said, "ANYBODY EVER TELL YEW, YEW GOTTA BIG HEAD?" Oh, he knew not what he said.

       I tell you these two stories, readers, to get pity. No, no-I tell you these two stories as a backdrop to explain why, at our ultrasound the other day, I asked the technician, with hesitance and a bit of fear, "How big is her head?"

      I expected a number. I expected maybe a big number. What I should have known based on the past (pour some out for one's Cap World), was that the answer was going to be this:

     "Umm...well....she'll have a lot of...brains...."

      That and the fact that as a 35 week old fetus she has a 37 week old's head sizewise, was the most concrete answer I could get out of her. This makes me afraid. And little daughter, I promise you...if you truly do have a big head, Mommy will order you the prettiest little hats ever-from a big head internet store. There will be a hat for you, Baby Miller-Hyman. Any hat in the world.