According to my Danish passport I am 194 centimeters tall. For those of you who don’t “do” metric, that’s a touch over 6’4”. I might have shrunk slightly with age but it's still pretty close.
At the same time, I'm not exactly a “beanpole.” That is to say, I'm not one of those very tall and impossibly thin guys who look like they might blow away the next time there's a strong wind. I'm pretty firmly anchored to the ground!
A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded how we each can have different perceptions of what we're actually seeing, right in front of us. One of our friends had stopped by (yes, we're relaxing a little bit on the whole Covid thing) and for some reason she commented on the fact that she had noticed that I tend to flinch quite often and she was wondering why. Mostly, I think, she was wondering whether I had been beaten as a kid and never quite recovered from it.
Which, of course, I haven't.
Don't get me wrong, being large and tall definitely has its advantages from time to time, but a large part of the time life pretty much feels like a very long flight in the center seat on the airplane.
Stuff is too small above and I have a road map of scars on the top of my head to prove it; stuff is too small on the sides and I'm often knocking things off the wall and shelves with my shoulders; sometimes I'd even argue that the floor is too far away. Or, at least, it's a real pain in the butt having to get something out of the bottom back cabinet in the kitchen!
Of course, I don't actively pay attention to it very often. Our friend's remark, however, made me a little more aware of pausing to note the situations where "large and tall" is potentially a rather different experience from how the rest of the world experiences life.
Yesterday, when I went grocery shopping for example, I noticed that when I was getting in the car — a perfectly normal Nissan Maxima from the late 1990s — I pretty much have to double over in order to get in. If I'm sitting up even halfway straight on the way in, the top of the door frame hits me at about the height of my ears.
I also noticed it later when I was carrying an armful of groceries down the stairs to the basement pantry. As I'm going through the doorway at the bottom of the stairwell my "wingspan" is simply too wide to fit and I had to set the boxes down and bring them through one at a time. Is it a hassle or a pain in the ass? No, not really it's the only way I've ever known so it's not a big deal!
I think where I actively notice it most is while cooking. I love cooking! But standard kitchen counter tops are about 8" too low to be a comfortable work height for me... and if I am doing a lot in the kitchen, my back gives out long before my enthusiasm! My best solution is to do a lot of work on one of those "bed TV tables" that raises things about 10-12 inches.
However, the middle seat analogy does hold true on a number of occasions, in a more literal sense. Most city restaurants for example — because they try to jam in as many people as possible — tend to be too cramped for me to be particularly comfortable.
Clothes aren't as problematic as they used to be, thanks to online shopping. Before that it was a bit of a challenge to find size XXLT in most clothing stores.
In closing this little exploration, let me repeat that this is neither lament nor complaint. I'm perfectly content with whom I am and my stature, but occasionally thinking about this a little bit serves as a nice reminder that different people's perception of exactly the same thing can be quite different for reasons we don't necessarily think of very often.
Thanks for reading and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 20210414 00:04 PDT
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