Have you ever seen Elf? There is a scene in the film where Will Ferrell is in this tiny elf shower, and he’s splashing water over his body to clean himself. That is a very accurate depiction of how I shower. Hi, I’m six foot eight, and the weather's just fine up here, thanks for asking.
Being a six foot eight lanky white boy, people tend to put me in a zoo. Have you ever stepped onto the subway, or got in an elevator and the people inside gasp in a hushed frenzy of childlike furor as they do at another mighty Giraffa (that’s a fancy word for Giraffe, I swear I’m not too much of a douche.)
My entire family may as well be an exhibit. My two twin older brothers are both over six foot two and my parents are a comfortable six foot one. I don’t even fit into your standard automobile, let alone all five of us. Despite our all too obvious “body length problem”, my father insisted on buying the smallest car on the lot, a Honda FIT. Now if you have been in a FIT then you know how surprisingly spacious it is, so tell that to the people who gawk in amazement at the sight of five circus stilt walkers emerging from a four by a five-foot box with reindeer antlers and a big red nose tied to the front. Yes, that tiny clown car was christened each year with two new, stuffed and fluffed reindeer antlers that stood out much more than was healthy for my pride, and a big red nose, meticulously centered on giving off the ultimate Rudolph effect. This is how we chose to travel, stuffed into a reindeer for all the world to see.
As if the antlers were not enough, my family of five pops out of our clown car in upstate New York to stop off for some much-needed Chipotle, where my pride would suffer a fatal blow. I just wanted a burrito, perhaps that was too much to ask. I understand that now, I only wish I understood that before I ducked my head under the doorway, with an insecure A+ health rating, into the B+ smelling building of a rest stop with the Chipotle scent.
He was a kid, a burrito man, perhaps I would even go far enough to call him a burrito artist, but for my pride, a killer. Most benighted comments on my height don’t bother me, I’ve gotten my fair share of “how’s the weather up there?” I understand that I am significantly outside of the standard deviation, but you all look like elves to me and you don’t see me staring. I expected my height to immediately be the topic of conversation, although I had hoped my burrito might come first. With an upwards tilt of his head, he asks my brother and I, “what team are you guys on?” I was startled at first. My usual encounters with Chipotle burrito artists, and strangers of the like, consists mostly of rude interjections on my height with no regard to my personal insecurities about talking to burrito artists and strangers of the like.
What team was I on? I had to think for a moment, he had truly stumped me. Was this a political question? A sexual one? My mind searched for longer than I am proud to admit, however, the conclusion was all the same; this guy thought we were a basketball team. The restaurant was suddenly full and all eyes were on the six of us. We stared at each other in intense silence, waiting for the wave of realization to sweep throughout the room. Our artist caught on at last, and then promptly began to take an indefinite break from human interaction, to preparing a now severely discounted burrito.
I admit that my height has its perks, I can utilize all the top shelves in my house, I always get picked first in pickup basketball, and there’s nothing like the feeling of a cool breeze on your face over the crowds of sweaty strangers packed at your every side at a blazing four-day music festival. But being tall isn’t always as great as it seems. When it comes to height my uncle Don put it best; “you should be short enough to get rained on with everyone else, and tall enough to keep your head above the clouds." Or maybe you just need to be tall enough to reach the top shelf but short enough not to be mistaken for a basketball team!