What short people might try understand about being tall, is it’s not as great as it seems. For one, everything above an average person’s head becomes a threat.

Sure, I can grab the can of beans from the top shelf with little effort, but that’s if the way is clear for the erection of a skyscraper. If even one obstruction is in the way, my head ceases to be the control center for my body and dawns it’s new role as a battering ram.

Yes, I have a big head which I will talk more about later, but no skull and skin can withstand the ninety-degree angle giant slayer that I like to call a kitchen cabinet. I’ve encountered more corners of death than I care to count and no strategy other than throwing her in reverse, prepares you for your sister opening one right above you. For any tall individual this essentially seals your fate.

Small Boy

When I was little, I had an excessively large head. Now, normally this would be fine. Who cares if a toddler has a big head? He’ll grow into it. Well yes, that’s true. I did grow into my head, but it was a long journey. I cracked my head open over seven times growing up. The growth spurt accounted for about three. Low hanging branches, baseball bats and other various things that normally shouldn’t be the appropriate height for impact against the skull.

The time with the baseball bat I had coming. I lived in Rhode Island for part of my childhood and there was this small rundown graveyard at the end of our street. A neighborhood kid and I would go play ball in the graveyard and aim for the tombstones. I know, I was a terrible kid, but we couldn’t play on the street because we kept breaking windows.

Anyways, one day I walked behind him while he was batting and got clocked in the head on the follow-through of his backswing. It floored me and two lessons were learned that day. Don’t play ball where the dead can curse you and don’t walk behind the guy with the bat while he’s swinging.

Meanwhile, when I was a smaller boy, the other incidents occurred due to a weight imbalance. When I was little, I would be over eager to get out of the car as fast as possible. I’ve always hated riding in cars. So I’d unbuckle my seat belt and get ready to dart from the car, forgetting I had a bowling ball for a noggin. My mother or father would open the car door and I’d come flying out head first into the pavement. When 75% of your body weight is in your head, it doesn’t matter what way you jump, you’re going to land head first. Think of a Badminton Shuttlecock on the body of a flailing child. Those occurrences accounted for the rest of my head trauma and had I not been born with the head of a grown man, I could have avoided at least some of them.

Dating in high school doesn’t happen.

Unless you’re born a Hercules, a rare occurrence that happens once in a blue moon, most tall people grow like I did. You start as a squat little husky boy, then in the span of about two years, grow two or more feet. Normal growth doesn’t punch a hole in the heavens, resulting in a need to relearn all necessary balance and coordination skills. It also doesn’t turn you into a bean pole, a Slim Jim, or El Esqueleto from Nacho Libre (pictured below).

Being attractive to the opposite sex is hard enough in high school without the pimples and the weird androgynous middle phase we all go through. Then try getting a girl to kiss you when she can play music off your ribs like a marimba. It’s not until you’re about 22 when your metabolism finally slows down enough to thicken. If you don’t lift weights before then, which apparently does nothing until you’re about the same age, you’re counting yourself lucky to even meet a woman before you’ve graduated college.

Closing Thoughts

And if you've ever heard the saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The answer is yes, I do.