Taller

            This really happened.

 

            After a morning of yardwork and housework and then Kim’s arduous dental appointment, we settled onto our couches in front of the television for an afternoon nap. After about an hour I tired of the movie and couldn’t sleep, so I moved across the room to my desk. Kim was dozing lightly.

 

            She awakened, stood, and then said in a startled voice, “David! Look at this! Look at me! I feel like Alice in Wonderland!” I did as I was told. She was significantly taller than the Kim I have known for years. 

 

            “Everything looks different – the table, the couch, the floor! I’m seeing them at a different angle! Come here!” I did so, and we gave each other a hug – something we’ve done at least a thousand times. This one was different. She was taller.

 

            We went upstairs to measure her height. She assured me that she was 5’ 7” in her younger days, but in the last few years, thanks to gravity and her spinal issues with degenerative disc disease, she now regularly measured 5’ 4”. Most mornings she would hang by her fingertips from a door frame, and that might stretch her an inch – for a while. But now she was 5’ 7”.

 

            We were puzzled. What caused it? Was there something in the drugs that numbed her jaw at the dentist’s? No, this was not some drug-addled delusion, as I saw the difference from across the room and tested it with a hug and then a tape measure. Was it the mushrooms? No, because we were due to have mushroom ravioli for dinner, but that was several hours from now. Or maybe it was the result of several hours in the dentist’s chair, tipped way back because the dentist is not very tall. Maybe.

 

            What was most refreshing wasn’t the added inches, but rather the fact that the world can offer us such surprises, and the more unexplained, the better. I feel a similar delight on the rare occasions that I stumble into something from quantum physics, something that violates what is sometimes called “common sense.” (For a taste of what I mean, try the movie What the Bleep Do We know. Cool stuff, and don’t worry how true it is, or whether the concept of “true” really applies.)

 

            Within an hour Kim was back to 5’ 4”. A hug confirmed it.