I worked in downtown Manhattan at One Liberty. One afternoon I decided to do a few errands at lunch. This was at the height of the Power Tie era, before casual Fridays were born. Virtually every male south of Canal looked exactly the same at all times: dark gray or blue suit, black shoes, briefcase, and bright yellow tie with tiny red thingies on it. The women looked pretty similar to the men, except for the lack of ties and the addition of ludicrous running shoes.
Having finished my errands, I was heading back to the office with the rest of the huddled masses and turned my head to look down a side street. There was a man there, walking towards me. He was perfectly Wall Street in every way—briefcase, suit, shoes–right down to the little red thingies on the tie. Except that his head was about six times smaller than normal. It was a tiny, tiny head. Time slowed down and everything around me disappeared, except for that man.
When I got back to the office I related my experience to some of my colleagues and, in that inimitable “I-have-seen-all-and-know-all-you-stupid-hick” New York way of theirs, they explained that the man I’d seen was “a pinhead.” Until then I had thought that “pinhead” was just a derogatory term—now I know that it’s a real condition called microcephaly. I’d never seen anyone with it before and haven’t since.
