But you can call me "Stretch"

Cellars are the bane of my existence.

 

You’d be right to assume there’s a touch of hyperbole in that statement, but trust me: The exaggeration is slight. Obviously there are other, banier banes which are more bane-like. Infectious diseases, Pauly Shore movies, and French fries without ketchup are all somewhere near the top of the list.

 

But there’s a certain dread that accompanies the prospect of delving into a cellar, even if it’s one of those posh, rec-room cellars with a dart board and collectible beer signs. ‘Cause see, this fear has nothing to do with dim light, dank walls, or overall potential creepiness.

 

It’s the ceilings, man. They’re too damn low.

 

Ever hit your forehead on an exposed water pipe? It creates a note that’s almost musical. Somewhere there’s a new-age recording artist wearing silver bracelets and a gold ascot, lips dry from blowing into a pitch-pipe, looking for just such a sonorous clang to complement some trippy meditation on the life-giving properties of tropical rainwater. I can picture the song now. Bubbling streams give way to a chaotic chorus of wind chimes, and then bong. Some dip whacks his noggin on low-hanging metal, hard enough to cause a bump the size and shape of a garage door opener, and voila. Masterpiece complete. For Pete’s sake, I need to stop riding on so many elevators.

 

I don’t blame cellars, per se. I blame height. I’m a tall dude living in a world made for normal-sized people, and the longer you live in the clouds, the more likely you are to encounter some unexpected limitations. It was great when I was a kid, ’cause I could ride all the cool roller coasters while my knee-high friends were all putting around on the antique cars, which provide a thrill roughly on par with darning socks. Back then I thought I was pretty awesome. Now I enter a house with low ceilings and feel like the only way I can escape is via some impossible Houdini-type trick, contorted limbs all tied up in knots. One of the major networks should send a camera crew to film me crawling around a dorm room. David Blane never attempted something so challenging.

 

Yeah, I know, I’m whining about a trait that many people wish they had. But it ain’t all hookers and blow, lemme tell you.

 

First of all, it’s a particular nuisance when you’re a bald man. When your hair’s shaved down to the nitty grit, your head automatically becomes a target, somehow violating the laws of physics by gaining gravity while losing mass. In all the years when my follicles were fertile, I slammed my head on random crap probably fewer than a dozen times, and that includes my early experiments with drinking. Now, with my scalp as naked as a newborn baby (but only half as gross), objects are drawn to it like an asteroid to a barren planet. I’m surprised I can walk outside without being bombarded by a maelstrom of tree limbs, potted plants and air conditioners.

 

More vexing, though, is the scale of things. I’m 6’4”, just shy of freakish, and yet it sometimes it feels like the world is a poorly-made doll house. I can only guess at what life is like for Shaquille O’Neal. Does he even have a cellar? If I were him I’d put my ping-pong table in a bomb shelter and call it good.

 

When I was about 15, I visited the Paul Revere house in Boston. Beforehand, I was warned that colonial dwellings were a bit more snug than I was used to, what with the smaller stature of men and women living in the 1770’s – something to do with peoples’ diets, I was told. I guess you don’t grow much when your food intake consists primarily of squirrel meat and damp wood. But there was no warning that could have prepared me for the shoebox proportions of this venerable patriot’s former home. Because of Revere’s standing in history, we tend to think of him, and other early Americans, as larger-than-life figures, somewhere on a scale between Lebron James and the Jolly Green Giant. If his dwelling was any indication, though, I’m guessing his legend has been exaggerated. The story maintains that he rode the streets of Boston on horseback, shouting warnings that the arrival of British troops was imminent. Judging from his former abode, it seems likely that he actually rode on the back of a house cat, spreading his warning door-to-door in the form of handwritten notes left in peoples’ shoes. He wrote them with mouse whiskers dipped in ink and then sealed them in envelopes the size of mosquito wings.

 

It’s a small house, in other words.

 

And if you haven’t been there, you should go sometime. Not just to soak in some early American history, but to experience the life of the vertically endowed: bumping shins on tiny rocking chairs, walking around with knees bent at 45-degree angles, and shimmying past microscopic writing desks to get to the living room, which is only a hair larger than a box of dog biscuits. Good times.

 

I should probably devote some minor effort to acknowledge that, yes, height has its advantages. The greatest benefit is at standing-room-only concerts, where my view is very rarely obstructed by the obscene neck tattoos of my fellow rockers; there’s generally nothing between my eyes and the stage save for maybe some acrid smoke and the flying bra or two. I just wish it was  a power I could turn on and off – scaled-up for live shows, diminutive for those times when I have to ride in the back seat of a Pinto. It would also come in handy if I were ever stuffed in a trunk with a burlap sack over my head, but so far I’m only running that risk in New Jersey and Mexico. Thank goodness for borders.

 

What freedom that power would grant. It’s a nice fantasy, anyway – to walk through a cellar without the threat of brain-scrambling head whacks. As always, a man can dream.