Originally published August 10, 2004
There are many little-known facts about giants. Did you know that giants never stop growing? Giants came into this world slightly larger than a normal child but where a normal child stops growing, the giant continues to grow. When the earth was created so were all the giants and since giants are immortal they are still alive today.
Oh yes, that is another one of those little-known facts. We know the stories of how some giants were killed. Goliath was felled by David. A fairy tale once told often to children, now nearly forgotten tells the story of a giant who had a magic harp and a goose that laid golden eggs and how one day a fellow named Jack climbed a beanstalk to this giant’s castle and stole these items. The giant chased Jack, but Jack cut the beanstalk and the giant came crashing to the earth, dying from the impact. Immortality guarantees a long life, if death can be avoided.
What of those other giants who did avoid death? Where are they now?
Since a giant never stops growing, so long as the giant continues to eat – was that mentioned before? Eating. A giant must eat to continue to grow and you don’t want to be around when a giant needs a meal. Once, one of the older and more giant of the giants sat down for a meal and a drink. Entire lakes were sipped dry. Great swathes of land were stripped clean of all vegetation and most animal life. The area is now called the Sahara desert.
As long as the giant eats, the giant grows. Unfortunately for the giant, the larger it becomes, the more effort it takes to move. Eventually, a giant can become so large that it can’t really move anymore and it lies down upon the earth to sleep.
Look now to the horizon and you may actually see one sleeping. Sleeping giants are often mistaken for mountain ranges.
While sleeping, giants’ hearts slow down and beat maybe once every twenty or twenty-five years. Sometimes they are mistaken for earthquakes, but more often, the giant is so covered with dirt, trees, and rocks from the centuries of sleeping, that the heartbeat only causes rockslides. The noise of it is dismissed easily as thunder in the mountains. For all who care, never attempt to wake a sleeping giant. Even if they are so large they can barely move, if a giant were to roll over, entire cities could be squashed. A simple cough could produce winds powerful enough to topple tall buildings. Even a simple deep breath could create a vacuum that could suffocate thousands of people.
Let sleeping giants lie.
