We’re all built to our own scale.  The human body is differently expressed in each of us.  And sometimes a tad oddly.  I’m thinking about this as I’m waiting for a new winter hat I ordered online to arrive. 

I’m built to a somewhat small-ish scale.  Height wise, I seem to be in the average range for a U.S. male: 5’9".  But my frame is slender, even as I walk through middle age and put on some weight.  Relative to other guys I am still pretty thin…but relative to where I was when I was a younger man I am much bigger in the waste and upper chest.  The body fat comes, I am certain, from my lifestyle, which is mostly centered around earning a living as a software engineer.  That keeps me sitting down most of the day.  Also, most of my favorite pastimes (like…er…blogging) involve many rigorous hours of sitting down.  That isn’t good for me at my age, but being single there is no one in my life to prod me, entice me, scold me into being more active.  So I sit a lot.  Even so, I’m still fitting nicely into my 31 inch waist 501s. 

Shirts are the biggest problem.  In theory I take a size small.  Medium is too big in the shoulders.  But sometimes small is too small in the waist, and sometimes…weirdly…small is too large in the waist.  Or too long.  Or too short.  I have to try on Every Shirt before I buy it.  It’s a pain…the biggest reason I hate shopping for clothes.  Jeans and other pants are usually no problem.  Business casual (which I hate) is easy.  I just buy to the waist and inseam (32) and forget it.  They don’t have to fit perfectly because they’re…business casual…and I hate business casual.  Nice business suits I get tailored to fit so they’re no problem.  I usually buy off the rack and then have them adjusted.  At this point in my life I only have four suits and I seldom wear them.  Bathing suits and briefs I have to really pay attention to the manufacturer’s sizing charts.  My waist is 31 and nobody agrees on what that is.  Sometimes it’s small.  Sometimes it’s medium.  One online bathing suit seller I’ve dealt with even calls that large.  I suspect they’re doing that so that most males can order extra-extra-extra large in the bathing suit department, and feel Uber masculine. 

Shoes are the one rock solid constant in my life.  I take a 7 1/2.  This is where everyone says I’m really small for a guy and I reckon it must be true because 7 1/2 is hard to find.  One straight friend was constantly telling me I have woman’s feet, so I guess a woman’s feet are generally smaller then a male’s.  But like everything else about my body, I think I’m "just right" and everyone else is unusual, even when the sizing charts are telling me I’m the unusual one.  I am always being told by shoe sales droids to "just try the size eights…they’ll probably fit" and they don’t.  I take a 7 1/2.  I’ve worn this size since I was at least 16.  The feet are the one thing about me that has never changed.

I’d never measured my head for a hat until this week, because I’d never bought one online before.  But when the hard freeze set in last week I realized none of my caps really kept my ears very warm.  I have a wool cap but it has shrunk over the years what with getting snowed and rained on and now it really looks dorky on me.  I have a severe weather goose down coat with a nice goosedown hood you can clip onto it…but wearing that hood around without the jacket would look even more dorky.  I got it in mind to buy a Russian winter hat like the one I used to have when I was a kid…

That’s me on one of my sleds way back in the Courthouse Square days.  I think I’m 11 or 12 here.  The shadow in the foreground is mom taking the snapshot.  I remembered that cap being really nice because I could flip up the ear flaps when I didn’t need them, and flip down the front flap when it was snowing and it kept the stuff out of my eyes.  I had no idea it was a common Russian design until one day an old lady smiled at me as I passed by and told me my hat made me look just like a little boy from her hometown back in Russia.  I must have looked a bit alarmed because those were the cold war days and Russia was the enemy and I didn’t particularly want to look like one.  I do remember smiling back to her and I kept on walking.  But years later I would remember it and feel sad for her.  In those days she was more likely then not an escapee from behind the iron curtain and feeling adrift in a strange land.  I should have stopped to talk to her.

Anyway…  So I decided to buy another one of these and I started looking around for one.  Naturally none of the local stores here carried them, so I went online and found plenty.  But I needed to measure my head before ordering.  So I got out the cloth tape measure from mom’s old sewing kit that I inherited after she passed away, and wrapped it around my head like the online guides to finding your hat size suggested.  I measure 23 inches around the top of my head.  That translates to a size large.

Mom always said I had dad’s big head, but I don’t think she meant that literally.  Anyway I found that interesting.  My feet are small for a guy…my waist is slim but not narrow…I normally take a small shirt and small in gloves…and my head is…large.  Now…I know that there are plenty of guys with bigger heads then mine…and I’ve talked with enough of them to understand perfectly that when it comes to intellect size does not matter.  No.  It just doesn’t.  But I would have thought I took a small there too and I don’t.  As I understand it, your head pretty much stops growing in adolescence. 

All my life I’ve had a terrible time figuring out what to think of my own body.  I have a natural inclination to think favorably of it…but I keep getting feedback (Hi Joe!) that I’m really not very good looking.  And being single for most all my life, it’s pretty hard to keep thoughts that you’re really an ugly bastard out of your head.  Logically I know that it’s all relative. When I was a skinny young male I thought I looked scrawny and awful.  Now I look at photos of me from that period and I am floored by how cute I was.  And since I stopped eating junk food and lost thirty pounds and got back into my 31 inch jeans I look a lot better now then I did a few years ago.  But after getting told to my face that guys who look like that want guys who look like that, its something else to stress about as I ponder being just a few years shy of 60 and still single.  My feet are small and my head is big.  I actually had to buy my winter boots in a female size because none of the stores had what I was looking for in 7 1/2 but I could get exactly the boot I wanted in a female size…I forget which now, they number them differently from guy’s sizes…that fit perfectly.  The advantage to being a gay male is you don’t feel de-masculinized when you have to wear woman’s boots.  I have small feet and a big head.  But at least the head will be warm when my hat gets here.