Throwback Thursday from Jan. 2016 – “What Is That Thing On His Head?”

Throwback Thursday from Jan. 2016 – “What Is That Thing On His Head?”

As far back as I can remember I have had a lump on the back of my head. Not a lump like you might get from whacking your head on the door of a kitchen cabinet or from a high and inside fastball. No. My lump is more like a Crab Rangoon stuck under my skin.

“IT’S NAHT A TOOMAH.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop”

What it is, is – a collection of fat and some obligatory blood vessels. So, I guess you could say that I am a medically certifiable Fathead. I’ve been called worse, today even.

It seems that whenever I go to get my hair cut there is a different person standing behind my chair. I try to explain to them what they are about to discover on the back of my skull. Almost all the time they cut me off, saying that they see such lumps all the time and it’s no big deal. That’s almost all the time. The one time I failed to give the haircutter (I can’t really call them barbers anymore) a heads up, if you will, she positively freaked out when she bumped into it. Now I never fail to give fair warning. I don’t want a hysterical person standing behind me with a handful of sharp objects.

I’m not the first person in my family to have one. My older brother was born with a lump. Unfortunately, his was in the middle of his forehead. From what I’ve been told, he resembled a cute, little unicorn. His was removed. My doctors, on the other hand, have always told me that it would be more of a problem to remove it that it would be to leave it alone. It’s not hurting me; I see no need to hurt it.

When I was working with kids for the last few years before I retired my lump came up in conversation quite often. Kids don’t miss anything. If they were younger kids I would tell them that the lump was my spare brain – just in case I had a blowout on the main one. With teenagers who asked about it I would tell them that it was where I kept my car keys.

Surprisingly enough these answers seemed to satisfy them. Either that or it scared them enough to stop asking questions.

The lump doesn’t bother me. I can’t see it. It doesn’t make noises or wiggle about on its own like a single serving of Jell-O.

One haircutter asked me if it bleeds. “It does if you stab it, yes. Other than that, no.”

It does make combing my hair a bit of a challenge for a few weeks after I get a haircut, but other than that, we live our separate lives.

Something I should have brought up earlier – “How big is this lump?”

Fair question. It is a bit smaller than half of a hardboiled egg or ping pong ball. I just didn’t want you going around thinking that I’m going around with an NBA Regulation size basketball hanging off my head. I’d never get a hat to fit if that was the case.

I thought about having someone take a picture of the back of my head, just for illustrative purposes, of course. I decided against doing that.

“A guy’s got to have some sense of mystery about him.” – “Lumpy” Rutherford from “Leave it to Beaver.”

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