Focus On Talbot: A Letter To The Grandsons by Dan Watson

Here is a copy of a letter recently sent to my three grandsons to explain a recent development at my house….

Dear Boys—

You’ll recall when you were little you asked me about my bald head, very unlike yours’ and your Dad’s. As I explained at the time, every person has a skull made out of bone, and you can fit just so much stuff in there. At some point you are stuck with a skull bone of a fixed size that just doesn’t get any bigger, no matter what.

Now, people who are really, really smart, or who read the newspapers and books and learn a lot of stuff, get bigger brains, and then there isn’t enough room for hair follicles too, so the hair gets pushed out. And that’s how come some people like me come to have bald heads.

And yes, I remember you noticed a few years back that I have hair growing out of my nose, and my ears too. Same deal you see. For most people those particular hairs stay buried inside the head, but if you have really a lot of brains, then they just push the hairs out your ears and nose both, and then they have to be cut off. Your grandmother is never happy if that is forgotten for a few days.

Now it turns out that next month I am going to get hearing aids. The Doctor said it’s because reading the Talbot Spy and Star Democrat every single day, and other things as well, has made that brain keep growing and growing. I guess it is now pushing on the little ear bones, which consequently don’t work so well. But these hearing aids will take care of that, so he said it is ok to keep on trying to learn more and more stuff.

But now the eye doctor says my eyesight is getting a little funky too. Do you think reading and learning a lot can make your eyeballs pop out of your head? That would be horrible—then you’d just have to watch TV! No, I guess that wouldn’t work either, would it? NPR, I guess. Anyway, maybe a really huge brain could finally get in the way, we’ll see.

Meanwhile you guys are young, so keep on reading and studying and trying to learn just as much as you can, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to go bald too!

Love, Granddad

PS. A big brain is different than a swelled head, which you definitely don’t want. We can talk about that next visit.

Dan Watson is the former chair of Bipartisan Coalition For New Council Leadership and has lived in Talbot County for the last twenty-five years.