What it’s like being extremely tall
Being taller than average is often thought of as impressive or imposing, said Nicholas Kulish. But at 6-foot-8, I go through much of life trying to shrink.
I WAS AFRAID of Midget Mark. Everyone at my favorite dive bar in Hong Kong, the Globe, called him Accountant Mark when he was within earshot, because he was the bar’s accountant, but when he wasn’t around, they called him Midget Mark because he was a little person. I was afraid of Midget Mark because, at 22 years old, I was just reaching my full adult height of 6 feet 8 inches, and I assumed he would resent me for my size. So when he hopped up onto the barstool next to mine, looked me over, and said, “It must be hard to be that tall,” I thought it was a trap. “How do you mean?” I asked him hesitantly. “Can’t buy shoes. Can’t buy pants. Airplanes must be a nightmare.” “Yeah,” I agreed warily. “How do you know that?” “I just take all my problems and reverse them,” he explained. “The world is made for average-sized people.” Our conversation happened 20 years ago hadn’t yet fused. But in my defense, my and with the benefit of hindsight I can see height wasn’t something that I had in common why Mark would have been kind to me. In with any close relatives or friends. And his eyes I was young, gawky, and uncomfortable it was very possible that I was actually still in my own body. He was confident. growing.
T He told stories about his time as a street
HE AVERAGE HEIGHT for an American performer, earning money as a clown, “You male is just over 5 feet 9 inches. know, juggling, short jokes,” as he put it.
For a woman it is just under 5 foot He was married and made a good living as
4 inches. The chart of height distribution an accountant.
in the United States stops 2 inches before it I was constantly embarrassed of my elbows, even gets to me. A height of 6 feet 6 inches is my knees, and my big feet sticking out a rounding error, less than a tenth of 1 percent everywhere. I hit my head a lot on low in most age ranges. door frames. I was different and the local
Asked in a series of emailed inquiries about Cantonese people in Hong Kong weren’t
the share of the population 6 feet 8 inches shy about reminding me. They jumped to
and above, a spokesman for the National try to touch the top of my head as I walked
Center for Health Statistics responded, by, or sneaked up behind me with their
“Our statisticians do not have the resources hands raised high to amuse their friends.
to find this data.” Sometimes, in the vegetable market near my house, the old women would just point at On the whole, being taller than average is me and laugh. perceived as impressive and imposing. There
are studies that report that height can raise I don’t think I was very happy in those
your earning potential and even increase days. I remember writing a short story to
your longevity. I walk the streets at night in amuse my friends in which I threw myself
strange cities with impunity and am rarely out a window but my giant feet got caught
harassed about anything other than my size. on a flagpole, stopping my fall before I hit the pavement. My body and my identity But for men, many of those same studies explain that the benefits taper off in the upper reaches of height: Longevity gains reverse themselves starting at 6 feet 2 inches; earnings stop increasing at 6 feet 6 inches. I have been every height and can say with some confidence that 6 feet 3 inches is the best height for a man. From there, every inch takes you further from attractive and deeper into a realm of the freakish, toward human spectacle. Unlike many very tall people, my height came later in life. As a child I was always tall for my age, but then in middle school I all but stopped growing for several years. My classmates caught up to me and passed me, and I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be 5 feet 7 inches with unusually large size-15 feet. I was bookish and bullied by several groups of older kids at school and in my neighborhood, mostly deservedly, because I had a big mouth and didn’t know when to shut up. I quit basketball, a sport I loved, because the coaches wanted me to play point guard on the freshman team and I had only ever played center. The summer after my junior year I really started to shoot up and, by my freshman year of college, I was 6 feet 3 inches. Though in my mind I was the same person, the world perceived me differently. It’s hard to quantify, but my increasing height seemed to help with girls, and on the whole classmates may have been a little more deferential. My friends still interrupted me, made fun of me, and treated me like anyone else, but something had started to change. I vividly recall a frat party with the dank smell of a room infused by keg after keg of cheap beer, dimly lit by Christmas lights, and a fraternity brother bumping a small, nerdy friend of mine repeatedly on purpose as he tried to fill his Solo cup. I walked right up to the guy, stared down at him— stared him down—and followed him until he left out the back. I had bullied a bully, and it was thrilling and somehow terrifying at the same time, as scary to threaten as to be threatened. Then I frightened a few people I didn’t mean to scare, women and men, and got called a monster a couple of times and tagged as Lurch from The Addams Family as well as Lennie from Of Mice and Men,