Bent down to kiss my girlfriend today. Threw out my back. #TallPeopleProblems

Relationships are difficult for anybody on the best of days. Having a good hair day? Great! You probably forgot to brush your teeth. Does your outfit look hot today? That probably means you’ll have a stowaway booger in your nose that everybody will conveniently fail to mention for the rest of the day. What I’m trying to say is that it’s difficult enough for the average individual to go out there and attract the right someone no matter how many steps you take to get ready, without the complications of your date being two sizes too small. That being said, a tall person has a couple more factors to incorporate in the selection process, most notably, height differences.

My girlfriend, Jacki, is 5’1” on a good day. I’m 6’6”. There’s almost a foot-and-a-half of a difference between our heights. Among the various questions I’ve gotten from people about Jacki and me, the most common one is, “How do you guys kiss?” To which I naturally reply, “She just jumps on the closest chair.”

Some things are simply more difficult for tall people. Finding an appropriate sized significant other is one of those things. Many men are uncomfortable dating women taller than them, and many guys don’t want to have to stoop so low to simply give their loved one a kiss. I used to have a “one-foot rule” myself. Basically, I wouldn’t consider dating a girl who was more than a foot shorter than me. That had to be revamped quickly after I missed all the cues to stop growing though.

What I found out in the end is that the difference in height only matters as much as you want it to. My girlfriend and I found ways to make things work despite our rather noticeable differences. Sure, I can’t ride all the roller coaster rides because I’m too tall and she can’t ride them because she’s too short. Needless to say, we avoid theme parks; granted, we can’t hold hands in public because its looks like I’m kidnapping her; sure, we can’t always dance together on a dance floor, but that’s just because she can’t handle my awesome dance moves… and I might step on her. However complicated things get, those limitations aren’t insurmountable, and we still manage to have fun finding new things to do together. As we’ve all seen on Hitch, the 2005 movie starring Will Smith and Eva Mendes, relationships don’t have a specific set of guidelines to follow; sometimes it’s the little imperfections between two people that make a perfect couple.

No trick photography here, I'm actually that tan. 

I’m going to end this with a little word to the wise to all the tall or short men or women, give the person that might break your own “one-foot rule” a chance. It could be the best thing that’ll happen to you. If nothing else, the lesson I hope you take away from this week’s post is that a person’s still a person… no matter how tall.

I’d like to hear about how you’ve gotten over height differences in a relationship, past or present. Leave me a comment below!

                                                                                                                     

I step on children. #TallPeopleProblems

Okay, so before I start getting hate mail, and letters tying to recruit me for population control (I’m talking to you India and China), I don’t actually step on mini-you’s. For the most part, I try to avoid them as best I can, usually by doing some crossbred dance move resembling a poorly choreographed mix of the shuffle and the hokey pokey. Back me up tall guys and gals, in an effort to avoid running over other people, we are forced to break into spontaneous dance with alarming regularity. Whenever our dance moves fail however, and we end up knocking somebody over, it’s somehow always our fault. I don’t understand it.

What most people don’t realize is that being of average stature is advantageous here; everybody around is practically right at eye level. Average humans are capable of seeing the tops of children’s heads or the belly button of someone tall. Giants, like myself, can’t see smaller people and casually enjoy the scenery around us at the same time. This has nothing to do with our height – tall people are simply terrible multitaskers.

This is a tall's-eye-view of an average person

Seriously though, imagine walking in the park, and suddenly you smell something awful. Chances are, you just stepped in poop left behind by an evil dog or some disturbed individual. It’s the same concept with tall people running into the vertically limited, except in this scenario, we’re the person walking in the park, and short people are the poop. No offense.

The logic behind why us tall people take the blame for these encounters escapes me. I stand at 6’6”, 260 lbs. – I am not a small guy by any means and I would like to think I’m pretty hard to miss. I have been described as a wall, a refrigerator, and several other large inanimate objects. How is it that short people keep falling victim to the bottom of my shoes? Can they not see me? When I’m walking around the house, I don’t run into my refrigerator, or my dresser, or the walls. I run into the chandeliers and the light fixtures, but that’s a different story.

The bottom line is that it’s not our fault, and most of us don’t step on shorter individuals on purpose. In fact, on behalf of all the tall people of the world, I apologize for all the times you’ve been run into. I can honestly say, we didn’t see you down there.

On a brief side note, a coworker of mine said to me yesterday, “I remember when I was tall.” Along the same lines, I remember when I was Bill Gates… except that I’m not, and never was.

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I bought a queen-sized bed, thinking I would fit. I don’t. #TallPeopleProblems

When individuals of average height are snuggled under the sheets of their bed, they tend to comfortably stretch across their mattress. My girlfriend is a master at this; put her in a California king-sized mattress, and I guarantee you, her hands and feet will be as close to the four corners as her 5’ 1” frame will allow her to reach. In order for tall people to do this though, a new mattress needs to be invented pronto.

Recently I upgraded to a queen-sized bed after getting tired of having to curl up into a ball to fit onto my old twin. I was so excited to sleep in what I thought was a gargantuan mattress with a cloudy pillow-top… until my first night. I don’t understand what happened. It seemed like overnight, the mattress shrunk to five percent of its original size; what initially felt like an entire floor of heavenly goodness morphed into a single square of slightly cushioned, double-quilted, Charmin Ultra. As you can imagine, sleeping is quite difficult on something no bigger than a sheet of toilet paper. On a nightly basis, my limbs wander until they are hanging over the bed into the abyss that is the rest of the room. Oftentimes, my arms and legs will fall asleep before I do, the veins and arteries suffocated by the pressure of the edge of the bed. Nowadays, I find myself laying on the bed, lost in deep thought. ‘If only, maybe… I didn’t have shins…yes, then I would be able to get comfortable.’

In situations like this, I envy short people and their ability to deftly maneuver themselves to fit perfectly into tiny areas. They’re like little smart cars; you normally want to drive something cool, like a minivan or a tank, until you find yourself parallel parking. Alas, it seems I’m going to have to do what all tall people must: turn my room into a large foam pit. 

This is seriously what I sleep on every night. Seriously.

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