"Holy Shit! I'm Kevin Durant!"

My feet are cold. I tried to pull them back under the covers. But, no matter how much I try, I can’t get them covered. This is weird.

The sun is up and glaring through the windows, so I throw the sheets back and twist myself to put my feet on the floor. As my eyes adjust, my knees are eye level.

“What the hell is going on?”

I stand up and look down. The bed looks like a postage stamp. My dog usually gets up at the same time. He’s awake, but instead of smiling and wagging his tail, he cocked his ears up and he’s looking at me sideways like the RCA dog.

Still disoriented, I head to the bathroom and forget to duck until the last second. Did the house shrink? I enter the bathroom and look in the mirror.

“Holy shit! I’m Kevin Durant!”

I stand up straight to look at myself in the mirror. I’m so tall all I can see is my torso. I put my arms out and flex and realize I am now an adonis! Cool!

What to do? Imagining the possibilities is sensory overload.

First things first. I have to find something to wear. I’m now 6’ 10” and all of my clothes are 5’8”. Let’s see. Shorts will work. I have a sweat suit shirt that works if I roll up the sleeves.

Ah! Shoes! How am I going to make a size 18 foot fit in a size 9 shoe? I guess I’ll have to make flip-flops work? This is going to be awkward. I’ll have to find shoes. But where?

I get dressed and head outside to my car. I walk up to it and realize that it’s also going to be a tight squeeze. This oversize stuff is more complicated than I thought.

My landlord emerges from his apartment with his head down, looking in the driveway for the morning newspaper. He notices me standing in front of him, looks up and does a double take so hard it makes his reading glasses fly off the top of his head.

“Wha? Can I help you?”

“Uh, good morning, uh, Mr. Goldstein. How are you this morning?”

“Do I know you? Have we met? I think I’d remember…”

“I’m a… a friend of one of your tenants. He said I might run into you.”

“Oh, well. That’s good. Let me know if (mumbles)”

Mr. Goldstein then spins on his heels and scurries back to his apartment, forgetting all about the newspaper.

I open the car door and move the driver’s seat as far back as it can go, and I still have trouble getting in. I have to get my right leg around the steering wheel and drop into the seat. My knees have to be wedged against the steering wheel to get the door closed.

This is ridiculous.

I click on the seatbelt and roll the window down just to get some room. Where in the heck am I going to find shoes?

Driving out of the neighborhood, I pass by the park. There are three guys shooting hoops on the basketball court. One guy is the jackass that thinks he’s hot stuff. He’s one of those trash talkers that goofs on people that are less coordinated than he is. Like he’s Michael Jordan or something.

This is too good.

“Hey fellas! You guys wanna play some two on two?”

The first guy looked over at me as I was approaching. His mouth dropped open as he pointed at me. The second guy didn’t move an inch. The guy that thought he was Michael Jordan was dribbling a basketball. He continued to dribble as he turned his head until we made eye contact and then he dribbled the ball off of his foot.

“Holy shit! You’re Kevin Durant!”

“Yeah. I get that all the time. My name is, uh, Ted. Me and Durant might be cousins or something. I don’t know.”

I am going to take these guys down to Chinatown. They're going to get a basketball clinic for the ages. Just as I was imagining the glory of dunking on them, they ran off. All of them. In different directions. At the same time.

I stood there for a few seconds, watching them run away. It must be lonely to be Kevin Durant.

Photo by Bruno Aguirre on Unsplash