By Andy Young
Special to The
Windham Eagle
Some time ago I was teaching a unit on memoir when one of my 18-year-old high school charges submitted something alluding to her height, or rather her lack of it. An eloquent writer who stood just over 5 feet tall, she intimated in her essay that she wouldn’t mind adding an inch or two to her stature.
Few people (regardless of age) are completely satisfied with how they look to others, and that’s too bad. Those wishing to alter their physical appearance slightly can easily do so, provided what they wish to change is something simple, like the style or color of their hair. And those possessing greater wherewithal can, albeit for a stratospheric price, find a plastic surgeon who’ll happily change the size and/or shape of a variety of body parts whose owners consider them too prominent, or in some cases not prominent enough.
But aside from
wearing platform shoes or developing a permanent slouch, there isn’t much one
can do to augment or lessen his or her personal altitude.
Fair or not, societal
norms and stereotypes have the potential to make things challenging for males
of less than average height, or women who tower over their peers.
I’ve always wondered
what the perfect height is. Is it different for a man than it is for a woman?
Does it change as one ages? And if and when some international fact-finding
organization has synthesized the data that they’ve spent decades compiling and
announces they’ve determined precisely what the ideal height is, how many
people (of any gender) will be fortunate enough to attain it?
I knew exactly what
my personal optimal height would be back when I was 12 years old: 6 feet, 6
inches. Since I planned at the time to make my living playing in the National
Basketball Association, I figured having the top of my head 78 inches above the
ground would, assuming I had correspondingly long arms, be more than sufficient
for me to excel in my chosen career while at the same time not making me one of
those people who can’t leave his residence without being gawked at. It was an
ambitious goal for someone with a 5-foot-7-inch father, but I was so determined
that I abstained from smoking cigarettes, and also from drinking coffee or tea,
activities which reliable sources intimated stunted one’s growth.
I never did make it
to the NBA, although an unwillingness to work hard and a general dearth of
talent had more to do with my coming up short (pun intended) in regard to my
professional basketball aspirations than any lack of height did. But there were
fringe benefits to having what were, in retrospect, less-than-realistic
athletic aspirations; passing on alcohol and tobacco in my quixotic effort to
grow taller turned out to be good decisions, both health-wise and fiscally.
Ultimately, I
attained what I consider to be a more than satisfactory stature. For those
obsessed with numbers, I currently stand 5 foot 13, or 6-foot-1, for people
unable or unwilling to do the math.
The bottom line is
that I ended up being one of those fortunate people who, through a process that
was most likely one percent design and 99 percent pure luck, achieved the
perfect height. But the funny thing is that good fortune has put me in a place
where I am surrounded by an astounding number of other kind well-adjusted
folks, both male and female, who have by utter coincidence attained the perfect
stature as well.
So what exactly is
the perfect height?
Whatever it is that you are, of course! <
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