Local Mayor Faces Own Worst Fears In Showdown With Giant Man

A local Mayor, long renowned for his diminutive stature and natural ability to walk under things without bumping his head, was thrown into a situation where he was forced to interact with a person who, by Lamont standards, was "a dadburn giant of a man!!". "Well, we were all honored to have Mike McCarty, acting Executive Director of the AWC (Assoc. of Washington Cities) come to our humble berg for a 'meet and greet" said the vertically and horizontally challenged Mayor. "The AWC is one of those organizations that make managing a town like Lamont so much easier, and we are thankful for them and, of course, were very pleased to be able to put a name with a face. So, when I heard a noise at the door and got up to see if that was him arriving from Olympia, one can imagine my surprise when this huge mountain of a man came crouching thru the door and towered above me like Doom itself. It was like I had been transported into Gulliver's Travels and I was the Mayor of the Lilliputians!!" he said.

"So, in order to mask the almost comical differences in stature I quickly made introductions and lead him to his chair so that he could sit down and I could thus avoid the comparative chuckles, snorts and snickers from the assembled council members and clerk/treasurer. I did receive one knowing sideways glance from Ruth Simpson that signified her recognition of the obvious size disparity (Ruth's keen observation skills are oftentimes even appreciated), but a swift kick under the table kept her from pursuing that unfortunate subject matter any further. I mean, Mike was so nice and well spoken and professional, a real pleasure to talk to - and I found myself almost forgetting that we were so physically different that an outside observer would be forgiven for thinking we were from entirely different species. It was like putting a pug next to a Great Dane, for Pete's sake! I mean come on. I was swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool there - make no mistake about it. Let's be honest here. I drank one heck of a lot of milk as a kid, but for some reason I was just programmed to have the body dimensions of Danny DeVito, I guess" he said dejectedly. "So, being a few inches taller than your dad is not all that important, after all!"

After successfully suppressing his completely natural yet overwhelming feelings of genetic inadequacy and making sure he did not slide his hand in his shirt like that other really short guy Napoleon used to do (and after making a mental note to never invade Russia), the Mayor avoided what could have been a "Waterloo moment" by not running from the room to warn the townsfolk of the potential danger of having a giant running loose and unchecked in Lamont on a Saturday morning and/or looking for 5 round rocks like his shrimpy role model David did when confronted with his own Goliath. "All in all it was an A+ of a meeting. Our positive views of the AWC were only enhanced by the professional demeanor of Mike McCarty - and I feel that we were able to share our differing perspectives of our respective organizations. The state of the Town is strong - and with partners like the AWC it is also bright!" he stammered clumsily in a vain attempt to distract from the insurmountable yet outrageous dissimilarities in stature and bearing and to pull the subject back to safer emotional ground from which to contemplate the unfairness of it all and to seek the embracing refuge of "what might have been" had the twisting double helix of Fate combined in a slightly different pattern all those years ago.