On Being Very Tall

By Carl Nelson

            Years ago I did some Stand Up Comedy.

I’m six foot eight, and I was taught in Stu Stewart’s School of Stand Up Comedy that a good way to begin your act would be to make a comment about some obvious trait. So I began by coming up on stage and after taking some time to raise the mic to my height, I’d remark: “I’m tall.”

This usually got a laugh.

“Although, when I was born I weighed only six pounds, eight ounces…”

(pause)

“… and I was three feet long.”

(more laughter)

“The doctors who delivered me…”

I moved my forearms as if transferring the lengthy child down the line up of doctors, left to right.

“…were given coffee and donuts.”

When you’re quite tall, you’re born onto a stage anyway. So you might as well make the best of it. In a photo of me with my relations hereabouts, it’s rather remarkable as they are all near the same size – around five foot eight. While my head and shoulders poke a foot above them all. If a person courts leadership or management positions, being tall is an advantage. Out on a work crew, in my younger years, the customer – not knowing who was in charge – would often address their questions to the tallest person, which I’d sidestep as politic as possible, so as not to upset our foreman. Being tall, to some short fellows, represents an automatic challenge. “I’d sure hate to get in a fight with you,” was often the initial riposte, followed by a climbing scale of dismissive jibes and barbs.

I’d frown. In some respects, they held the (social) advantage. If we did scrap and they won, it was their huge win. But if they lost, I’d gain no points, except perhaps for bullying. Of course, they could get hurt. But some of those little rascals seemed to thirst for it.

If you are very big, keeping your mouth shut is the best policy when in a rough situation, as I’ve found the common imagination paints me much more fearsome than reality might reveal. I’m not sure, as I’ve never been so engaged as to let the throttle fully out. However, I’ve come close.

Many years ago, I lived in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle where I would ride the #7 bus to and from work. This was a rough route full of minorities and recent immigrants. It was winter, so besides my height and weight I wore a thick sweater beneath my thin bus jacket, making me appear rather mammoth in that constrained bus aisle. That afternoon, I was riding inbound. A large group of unruly Black kids had taken it upon themselves to harass a recent immigrant fellow sitting, silent and quite stoic, a few seats foreword of where they ruled the rear of the bus.

Something about those entitled little sh*ts provoked and enraged me. I observed the immigrant’s stoic resolve and felt for the travails he must have endured both in escaping his homeland on the boats, and then upon re-locating and trying to manage an existence in our strange land. One of the kids began rolling little pill balls of paper and pelting this fellow from behind with them – an action the immigrant still ignored stoically, as the little pills of paper bounced off his shoulders and head. It seemed an outrageous breach of respect. I can stand yelling, violence, swearing, and can view all sorts of bad behavior as almost comical – but rudeness can really set me off. I turned and stood to eye them all: “Does someone here have something they want to get off their chest?” I barked.

I had no idea what would have been the outcome if we had all engaged.

But suddenly the bus stopped. (The driver must have been observing.) The doors flew open, and the kids all scattered, pushing each other aside. As the bus continued on its route a bit later I noticed that a back window was flapping, so one of them may have exited that way.

Anyway, sometimes being very tall with the ability to appear very intimidating can be a plus, and a plan.

The author in a Thai lavatory.

            But you always stick out. Visiting Thailand some years ago, this was especially true.  “Farang”, are what the Thais call foreigners. And I have to say, that as I looked about at the local population, it was remarkable how slender, lithe, and simply dressed these people with beautiful brown skins and glossy black hair were, and how stylish they appeared in contrast to the hairy, pale and blotchy, sweaty, mammoth, plodding foreigners with their gruff language and raucous laughter. We must have seemed near beasts. At the orphanage, our future son’s confederates gawked at my height and snuck up beside to pull at my forearm hairs.

People can be very bold when curious as to my height.

I was in the grocery one day when a little boy began jumping around me and yelling, “Mommy, mommy… a giant!” The woman looked at me as if I were bothering the boy and pulled him away. Perhaps I was frowning.

Out of the blue, people will stride right up, or call from across the way, “How tall are you?”

The woman had called out the question to my back while I was speaking on a far aisle with the cashier.

While visiting Safari World in Bangkok with our newly adopted son, I had stopped to admire a porcelain statue, covered in beautiful painted designs. It was of a naked woman standing with water shooting out her nipples. The Thais have an impish sense of humor layered onto of all sorts of sexual tableaus – all the while dressing quite modestly and interacting quite formally. I was rather astonished by the piece. But while I stood charmed, a crowd of Indian tourists gathered about me, also charmed – but by my height. And they were getting rather intrusive (as big, brown, hairy, sweating Indians can get). I didn’t realize the reason, but apparently they wanted a photo with me. My clever wife strode among them demanding they pay five baht to photograph – and this quickly scattered the throng. They were taken aback – like buffaloed musk oxen, from a barking Chihuahua – and dispersed with a huff.

While visiting the Royal Palace, other Asian tourists wanted (and got) their pictures taken with me (for free). And on a further occasion, I was sitting alone in a fairly deserted portion of an airport one day when a crowd of Japanese tourists passing suddenly all flocked and clustered around, sitting on both sides of me, while another member stood before us to snap the grouped photo. Then they all got up and left. All without saying a word!

I’m a walking zoo – of one, it sometimes seems.

Above a certain height, the world is not arranged to accommodate you, and you must find some way to adjust. For example, driving the Metro bus, I found that the sixty-five foot newer, articulated busses which the Metro had purchased had a driver’s station in which the seat did not offer enough leg room for me to sit. I had already picked a route which used this bus model. And I was afraid if I told the management of my problem, they would not find me another bus. Rather, they would just fire me, and find a shorter driver. So I drove the route sitting a bit sidesaddle. As I found if I did this I could just get my knees beneath the dash. This was not particularly comfortable. And I also found that it is much harder to get a feel for where the remainder of the bus is, when you are driving, if you sit crooked. This made turning corners and maneuvering conceptually dicey. But… “hoo-rah!” I soldiered on and prevailed.

Being tall also got me out of the draft, and probably also the war in Vietnam. In retrospect, how I felt about my draft evasion at the time was very much replicated in the attitude of our 13 year old adopted son at a later period – when dealing with his severance from the Thai orphanage. An event which I covered in this poem:

Delicate Negotiations

Before leaving with our child,

the orphanage director sat down with him,

and ourselves, at a round table, to talk.

She was especially conversant

with our new son, Tin Tin,

who sat rather stoic, saying little.

Anna, our Thai friend, asked us to

step outside for a bit

while she spoke to the director.

After leaving, Anna told us

what they had been discussing.

During his stay, Tin Tin had saved $800

out of his bus fare and lunch money.

The director thought it would be very nice

if Tin Tin would donate this money to the orphanage.

Tin Tin supposed it would be nice –

but he didn’t want to.

Anna, apparently, had stepped in

to tell the woman director to back-off.

Later, fearing that the director

might hamper our adoption in some way,

an agreement was reached

wherein Tin Tin would keep his savings,

and we would donate to the orphanage

a new washer.

I supposed fighting Communism was a good thing – but I didn’t want to. There are a multitude of things I am against, but I’m not about to go halfway around the world to fight about it.

From long experience I knew that the weight scales all had a sliding metal height gauge, which would come out of its track when extended beyond six foot eight. I was actually then slightly under six foot eight, but as the examiner was looking up in astonishment at just how high the scale might go, I gave a slight a lift to my heels. The thing rose out of its track and fell clattering to the floor.

The examiner exclaimed. They all exclaimed. I was clearly too tall.

Vietnam is now one of our major Asian trading partners. So, “All’s well that ends well,” I suppose.

Buying clothes, as I reached near my full height in high school, was also a difficulty. Wherever I went to shop for clothes, I found something which caught my interest only to find they had nothing in my size. Shopping just got too depressing. Then, what with the relaxing dress codes, I found I could get through most of high school days by wearing jeans and clean t shirts with my London Fog jacket, which became my uniform. At one point, when everyone seemed to be turned out in some cool hippie garb, I thought perhaps I could sew myself a stylish mod- shirt of some cool fabric. But my mom’s electric sewing machine was not only hard to manage, but was a bit frightening with that inexorable needle pulling at your fingers as it drew in the cloth. And I found I had an ill fitting garment with bunched blossoming shoulders. So much for that idea.

Another thing which may happen when you are so much larger is that people will offer you whatever food there is that is left over, or which they took but don’t want. Lots of things that are set too high, they’ll ask you to reach, or tasks which require height to accomplish, you’ll be requested to perform. Anything heavy to move, they’ll hand off on you. Short ladies at stores, I’ll often offer my assistance. When I’m in a movie theater or concert the woman behind will sometimes ask me if I would “slump”, please. On airlines I’ll be quietly incensed to pass by small people wagging their legs in the few seats with legroom such as the bulkhead and exit rows. It seems to me that the airlines, by dictating scant leg room in their seating arrangements create a disability which they should be required to address with compensatory arrangements, such as with the other handicapped.

Hey, I’m (clearly) the victim here! (Just look!)

“So how’s the weather up here?”

Just fine actually. (A little dustier you’d find, if checked.)

 

How’s the view down there?

 

Things Short People Never See

What an irritation small stairs are!

And hovels! The bent over life is not for me…

weaving in and out of ceiling fixtures,

dodging the sharp elbow of that hydraulic door closer.

Why can’t short people extend their habitats a bit?

It’s just such a blessing that I can fold.

God is looking out after us,

and perhaps we catch those higher notes of existence.

Do we sometimes see opportunities sooner?

As whenever our ship comes in

– as it first crosses the horizon –

as whenever anything unexpected arrives,

it first breaches the purview.

Like a tree in the forest,

it only makes sense to be taller

to see over fences, down crevasses and cleavage…

those blurry, vertiginous depths…

Grand Canyons of opportunity.

It goes without saying throughout civilization that

you must have some stature above mere existence.

And certainly short people can see this.