Finally 'capping' a big challenge

A few years ago, accompanying my youngest daughter into a mall hat shop, I admired the baseball cap a young clerk was wearing.

"Sorry, all we've got left is extra-extra-large," he said, thinking I was interested in buying one. "Be way too big for you."

I bet him it wouldn't.

I won the bet. That hefty-sized head-covering looked like a toddler's yarmulke on me.

"Wow," was all the awestruck clerk could manage.

Once the shock wore off, he did manage to find a cap that fit me. But having grown used to a hatless existence, I didn't purchase it. That Christmas, though, my daughter gave it to me. Having inherited my head, she obviously felt my pain.

As an infant, her head measurement greatly alarmed our pediatrician. His fears weren't allayed until a nurse pointed to my head, the massive old block off which the child's supersized skull had been chipped.

"Look at the father," she advised the doctor.

"Oh," he said comprehendingly.

That Christmas hat proved to be extremely practical. I've worn it ever since. And "ever since" is no exaggeration.

It was so incredibly freeing to have a cap that fit. I wear it to play golf, to Phillies games, on the beach, when it's cold outside.

The only problem is the Villanova logo on its crown. I've grown so weary of trying to explain why I, a Temple grad, am wearing a rival school's hat, that now, whenever I'm asked if I'm a Wildcats alum, I just nod my happily hatted head affirmatively and flash the V sign.

As a youngster, perhaps I alone at St. Pius X understood that all those nuns who cautioned us about the perils of having a big head were speaking literally, not figuratively. My Dave Hollins-like noggin has been a lifelong problem, particularly when it comes to sports.

While the Villanova hat has soothed my discomfort a bit, whenever I come across photos of my Little League and Babe Ruth teams, I still cringe.

It's not the missing front teeth or, later, the buck teeth that make me wince all these years later. It's not the adolescent awkwardness or those facial expressions, so pained they're like window onto my uneasy soul.

It's the hats.

Those photos of the Owls, Dodgers or Panthers are reminders of what a headache my head has been.

There we are, all of us lined up in neat rows. All of us are dressed in the same uniforms. And all but one of us are wearing matching baseball caps.

In some photos, I'm the only player in an unmarked hat. In place of the team model, I'm sporting a blank, generic cap loaned to me by some kind but equally giant-domed adult to span the annual gap between the start of the season and the late arrival of my cap, which, as the entire league knew, had to be specially ordered from incredulous suppliers.

In others, while my teammates wear theirs pulled low over their eyes in a style popular in the early 1960s, my hat, at least two sizes too small, sits far back on my head, teetering there not in a display of youthful contrariness but because I could pull it no further forward.

If I can laugh about it now, trust me, I couldn't then.

Almost every kid in that "Leave it to Beaver" era wore baseball caps. But because they never fit me, I never fit in. Words can sting. Children want nothing more than to be normal, to fly below the radar and dodge the cruel insults. I, too, tried to keep my head down, but its grotesque proportions made that impossible.

Football helmets were even worse. Trying to squeeze my head into one was like trying to force a golf ball through the mouth of a Coke bottle. I actually crammed into one for a game against a rival neighborhood. I was of little use that day. The helmet's sides pressed so tightly against my ears I couldn't hear the signals.

My poor mother, despite being a determined and focused shopper, never could find a helmet for her misshapen son, though that didn't stop her from bringing home several models that some uncomprehending salesperson had assured her would be large enough for anyone.

Writing this, I suddenly understand why I gravitated toward basketball.

Boy Scouts was the same story. Because the only way I could have fit into one of those little garrison caps scouts wore then was to affix it to my hair with dozens of bobby pins, Troop 458's macho leaders gave me a pass whenever a full uniform was required.

Not surprisingly, my Villanova cap is fading and getting a bit grungy. So last week, in the latest chapter of this lifelong mission impossible, I walked into another mall hat shop.

"Let me see the biggest hat you've got," I said.

The first freakishly sized one the clerk showed me, a Penn State model, didn't come close. An Eagles cap was a little better, though it still felt like someone had stretched a tiny rubber band around my skull.

Confronted by a challenge, the scope of which he likely never had envisioned, the $7.50-an-hour clerk warmed to the hunt.

Extra-extra larges were rare, but he scoured the inventory to uncover them. I tried on the caps of every pro and college team in the Philadelphia area - though principle impelled me to refuse a Flyers model. All were too small.

Persistence paid off. He eventually found a Phillies cap that would have looked at home atop one of the inflated balloon heads in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

"Wow, this is as comfortable as my Villanova cap," I told him.

And so, contented and feeling a little less freakish, I walked to the cash register to pay for it.

"Hold on," the clerk said. "It's buy one get the second half price. Let's find you another hat."