Saturday, January 19, 2008

Seriously, folks


I am regretful for my years and years of unbridled hyperbole, because I have a little story that will seem like a hyperbole, but, ask Ryan (he doesn't lie like I do), I am being totally for real.

Yesterday at Costco, I saw a giant. A real, live giant.

We were walking toward the produce section when Ryan gasped (uncharacteristically) and whispered an obscenity. Once I saw what he was looking at, I whispered one of my own. There, looming large over a case of living crustaceans, was The Giant. He probably shops at Costco because it's the only store big enough to house him, or perhaps it is because he feels at home among the giant merchandise. Or maybe he just can't get food big enough to feed him elsewhere. At any rate, a genuine estimate is that he was eight and a half feet tall. We determined this by comparing how much taller he was than the crab case with how much taller Ryan was than the crab case, which looked to be two and a half feet in discrepancy. Also, he was shopping with, presumably, his wife, and she was taller than me but at least three feet shorter than him. It was amazing. I desperately wished that my snazzy-yet-dysfunctional camera phone took pictures without making an irritating and giveaway fake shutter sound. Come on, engineers, if you create a loud fake shutter sound, how am I supposed to covertly take pictures of giants? Ryan said that he wished it were acceptable to approach freaky strangers and ask to have your picture taken with them, because he knew nobody would believe us. But they should. It was a real giant.

Incidentally, our cashier that day was a lady who looked to be about 4'10" and 85 pounds. She must have been wearing children's clothing, she was so little. I could not say as conclusively that she was the smallest person I had ever seen (barring LPs) the way I could say that the giant was the largest, but she may well have been and, either way, it set up quite an interesting juxtaposition.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jealousy! I wish I could have seen him too. A real giant *sigh*
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Jen said...

So do you think he was a BFG? Or a BGG (Big Grumpy Giant)? I bet he was friendly since he had a wife. No one wants to me married to a grump. Especially not a giant one.