Omniscient narrator meets Amazonian woman

Ever the omniscient narrator, when the occasion arose lately for me to send some pics to a friend, I could not refrain from attaching a few bon mots. After all, a picture may be worth a thousand words but there’s always room for a few more (to evidence this please see the length of some of my earlier blog entries.) Accordingly, rather like a child's first picture book, each item was proudly labelled, eg. under house was written house. I kept up with even the trickier photos which are strictly subgenres, thus instead of water- I correctly identified waterFALL. A few adjectives later to spice up the nouns, along the lines of WHITE chair, and I decided both my work was complete and it best to rule out ever being a curator.

I'm terrible at giving a commentary on anything because I tend to be far too literal. On one memorable (for all the wrong reasons) occasion, while showing a prospective to housemate around my house I became completely inarticulate and had absolutely nothing to say about my home. The onset coincided with about the same time the prospective tenant crossed the threshold. This could be partly explained by the fact that she was over six foot tall, I kid ye not. Alternatively, I was the (not very sub-)conscious saboteur of the showing, accustomed as I was to living alone there- my girlfriend and I had just started dating and she had only just moved her metaphorical toothbrush into my bachelorette pad. I liked tout-a-deux.

I have always been intimidated by women taller than me. Unsure why exactly, there are two Freudian explanations: perhaps it arises from ambiguity surrounding my own height; that or it is an Amazonian woman phantasy which leaves me overcome. I myself am 5 foot 8 (1m73) high, or long depending on one’s perspective and whether I’m standing or lounging. I have always maintained I am longer than taller. Heightwise, I tend to lean a lot. To invoke a little Pythagorus here and to recast the form as a right-angled-triangle, this measure of 5'8" is therefore more accurately the hypotenuse, and the "opposite" (the distance perpendicular to the floor, ie. how far up the wall I reach) will accordingly be less, itself related to theta θ (ie. degree of slope of feet against floor).

Thus "apparent height"/sinθ = "my actual height".
Where sinθ is invariably <1, the smaller denominator thereby effects an increase.

Put simply, I am "shorter" when leaning if height is measured from floor upwards. As I am never up straight, I am typically underestimated and regularly hear people exclaim with wonder, "See, I said she was taller than you!" (when and why was this debated without me I muse, lost for a response); a lover once marveled that I was "much taller than I looked" upon her first time of seeing me horizontal and realising how much of the bed I took up ("why the "much"" I pondered, and, "is that a euphenism?" I later wondered). Whichever way one looks at it, not being straight comes so very naturally to me.

Back to the tour of my little grotto, this had hitherto always seemed bohemian and good taste until I tried viewing it through the eyes of a stranger and it became, well, stranger. Normally chatty, nerves got the better of me, and upon reaching the bathroom I could hear myself saying, "This is the bathroom", the kitchen, "This is the kitchen", the lounge, "This is the lounge"....No other description, just that, in case it had escaped her notice and she later tried bathing in the sink or bedding down in the lounge perhaps. When in doubt always reinforce the functionality of each room, "Oh yes we bathe in the bathroom here, and lounge in the lounge, your bed would be in your bedroom, the entrance we exit from too- so don't forget that or you could never get back out... I know, it can be confusing", and so on.

To make matters worse, to acknowledge my semantic overstatement I groped around linguistically and in a flash of inspiration (or is that desperation), popped "ironically" on the end of every statement. It so became, "This is the bathroom...ironically" and so on ad infinitum. This was no more ironic than the scenarios in Ms Morisette's eponymous song (a traffic jam, when you're already late is more accurately described as Sod's law, for irony please consult Mr Wilde and his niece Dolly). Seven rooms later and she couldn't get out of there quick enough; and my partner (who'd only been dating me for a few weeks) was looking at me quizicaly, and entertaining private thoughts which she chose not to share... ironically.