Conjecture injection

Isn't it funny how much taller everyone is nowadays? Only the other day I was trying to buy a hat for a friend, when the hatter asked not only for the hat size, but the overall height of my friend. "Well I'm not sure" I was forced to admit, "why ever do you require that information?" It was, I was told, to ensure the wearer graceful passage through today's standard doorways and openings. This highlights a related problem: that of the lowering ceilings in modern buildings. A quick survey of ceilings from the oldest nearby residential building (1856), through one of later vintage (1936), common age (1964) and new housing (2002) reveals a clearly inversely proportional relationship of diminishing headroom to age of building.

One doesn't have to have surveyed the nation's average height, compared this with prevailing hat fashions in corresponding years and plotted it all against the narrowing profit margin of house building to see problems on the horizon, especially if one is very tall. If these trends continue, light fittings may overcome breezes as the chief cause of hat-loss, while milliners will be forced to reign-in the scale of their creations for indoor use.

As ever, new technology has the answer in the form of holographically-projected headgear, already the in-thing at the hippest parties for optical research scientists in Vienna and the US. But for those of us without long-term research posts or justification for diverting portions of massively inflated defense budgets, there is a simpler solution inspired by the skateboarders (or "sk8rz") who occupy the ramp near Netto or hang around down Winterton Park. Wannabe hattists finding themselves without the necessary space above their heads to place the stylish apex of a perfect outfit can strap protective pads to their knees and effectively walk around with an extra 2-3 feet of reclaimed hat-room. Not only is this a stylish and practical answer for the very tall indoor hat-wearer's nightmare, but an added credibility boost in the eyes of a highly disapproving youth for hat-wearing authority figures such as police officers, bishops or witches.

Shrinking Americans and Historic Heights