My mom would usually read us bedtimes stories when my sibs and I were little kids. On occasion, however, Dad would read to us instead. And he would invariably choose his favorite book, The BFG (or Big Friendly Giant) by Roald Dahl. Little did any of us know at the time that one of us would actually marry a giant someday. That turned out to be me.
Living with a Giant Husband is not always fun or easy. I had my own little place when we were married that he moved into, and though I loved it (including the purple shag carpet in the bedroom), Giant Husband just didn’t fit. His head touched the ceiling, he had to duck through doorways, and the ceiling fan in the living room was likely to decapitate him if he wasn’t careful, so we had to move out.
Giant Husband also has giant feet, and his shoes can be quite dangerous. Tripping over a pair of regular-sized shoes isn’t fun, but ever trip over a pair of size 15s? Those things are killer. Since I often mistake his shoes for the cat because of their similar size, you’d think I’d notice them in time to keep from tripping, but no, they migrate through the house so much that I never seem to see them coming before it’s too late. And sometimes they hide, such as under the blankets on the floor at the end of the bed. Someday the headline proclaiming my demise may indeed read: Tripped To Death By Giant Shoes On Stairs.
Now like a lot of people (regularly sized or otherwise), Giant Husband has a habit of putting his hands on his hips while standing. This wouldn’t be any cause for alarm except that this puts his large elbows right at the level of my head. And because I’m like a small mouse in comparison, Giant Husband often doesn’t notice me, and turns around in said position before thinking. It’s like he’s wielding a great, sharp, equilateral triangle and my face is a circle and he’s trying to determine the cosine or something and… okay, so I was never very good at geometry. But basically he hits me in the face with his elbow and it really hurts. I’m surprised my nose hasn’t been broken yet.
I did, however, nearly likely have a toe broken once because Giant Husband accidently stepped on it. Ever stub your toe on a table or other hard piece of furniture while stumbling around in the dark? Well this was pretty similar, except that it hurt for days. I probably should have gone to the doctor, but I just looked into purchasing steel-toe slippers for myself instead. Step on me once, shame on you, step on me twice…
And don’t even get me started on the furniture. Beds, sofas, chairs, fridges, toilets – these things just aren’t made for giant people. They don’t fit, and they don’t last. Take refrigerators, for instance. We can’t have a freezer-on-top type of fridge, because Giant Husband can’t see what’s in the fridge below without face-planting into the freezer part. And a side-by-side type still doesn’t work well, because Giant Husband can’t see most of the shelves, which means most of the leftovers don’t get noticed, don’t get eaten, and then get pushed to the back of the fridge in the dark somewhere until they grow mold, legs, and self-consciousness and move up to the front of the shelf on their own accord for me to carefully (that means wearing rubber gloves and using a pair of tongs) throw them away.
Living with a Giant Husband also makes a lot of things hard to find. If I put an item away, it will usually be within my line of sight, or at least within my reach. The same probably goes for Giant Husband, but because our individual lines of sight vary by about two miles (okay, okay, two feet), if he puts away the duct tape, the cocoa-maker, a plastic poncho, or some other item that doesn’t necessarily have its own specified place, I’m not likely to find it. I can’t count how many times I’ve looked and looked for an item and never saw it, or finally did find it but I’d need to stand on tiptoe on an upturned trashcan on top of a chair to reach it.
And that’s why not only living with a my husband makes me feel like a hobbit residing in a human-sized house with a troll (a very good-looking troll, but a large troll nonetheless), it’s also quite dangerous to my self preservation. So please cut fun-sized girls some slack. You’ve no idea the hazards they might be going through on the daily.
