The sunsets are returning (albeit at 10pm) and with them come moments of contemplation. I’ve been reading The Help and one of the main characters is a young, tall woman, with whom I closely identify.
I was 5’10” when I was twelve. Actually, I was always head and shoulders taller than kids my age, but the summer before 8th grade, I grew six inches. No joke! I’m sure my mother thought that I was going to be a giant. Thankfully, I never grew after that point (at least not up). I was skinny (weighed about 110 pounds soaking wet and always knew that those Miss America contestants lied about their weight), had stringy brown hair (my daughters call it black), a prominent chin (at birth, my Aunt Chris suggested immediate plastic surgery), and absolutely no shape to my pencil thin body. Middle School was a nightmare.
You remember those days of teasing boys, bitchy girls, and scared parents. I was called Stork, Giraffe Legs , Too Tall, Bones, and Metal Mouth (yes, I had braces, too) by the boys, outcast or bullied by most of the girls, and ignored by my parents, who were divorced. My mother was remarried to my first evil stepfather and as I entered high school, she married evil stepfather #2 (but that’s another blog). To her credit, she was never outwardly degrading towards me. Her gentile, southern upbringing taught her to be more demure than that. She was beautiful; all of my friends told me so. She was a raven-haired beauty with sharp, Blackfoot features, green eyes, a large bosom, and nice legs well into her senior years. She wore heavy makeup and loads of hairspray. She had to be embarrassed of me, even thought she never said so, her actions told the story.
I was encouraged to wear makeup, she sewed dresses for me, helped me to shop for flat shoes and taught me how to smile without showing my brace-covered teeth, all while encouraging me to stand up straight. However, being born with a bone condition that caused a sunken chest which was repaired via a Pectus Excavatum when I was three years old, I also had severe Scoliosis and one leg longer than the other. Unfortunately, the last two conditions weren’t diagnosed until I was well into my 20’s because I had learned to compensate for them. My mother loved to take pictures, often dressing us up in matching clothes. On those photo op occasions when she was behind the camera instead of in front of it, she would admonish me, “Don’t stand with your hip cocked! Stand straight!” This was repeated to me so often that I began to lift my right heel off the ground just a tad… just enough to straighten out my hips. I remember being a crossing guard in the 6th grade and standing on the street corner with that heel slightly raised, remembering my mother’s scorn and not wanting to look odd to passersby. It never occurred to me that there might be a medical problem (obviously, it never occurred to Mommy Dearest either), so I went through my life with my little secret heel lift, until one day, at the age of 29, when I threw my hip out and the physical therapist was amazed to discover that I had one leg a half-inch longer than the other.
I played basketball from 4th through 10th grade. I didn’t play because I loved the game. I played because people said, “You’re tall. You should play basketball!” I was miserable, but I was always on the team. I’m not a team sport kind of person. I’m a loner and I know that (another blog topic – wow, they are everywhere). I really don’t give a crap about sports. But, I was tall. I sat the bench for most of those seven years. My mother came to so few games that you could count them on one hand.
I was never so excited as I was my freshman year of high school when 6-foot tall Sonny Samu moved to town. Finally!... a boy taller than me! Of course, he decided to date cute, little, compact Candi Gustafson (future prom queen and first string point-guard on the basketball team) and never gave me a second look.
Finally, when I was a sophomore in high school, my mother came to a game and watched me sit the bench, daydreaming as I stared into the crowd seated on the bleachers across the gym from me. I couldn’t have told you the score to save my life! I’m sure the coaches put me on the team every year only because I was the tallest girl in school and it looked intimidating to the opposing teams for us to have a 5’10” girl on the roster in northern Wisconsin. After that fateful game, my mother asked me if I liked to play basketball.
“uh… no….” I stuttered.
“Well, Kathy! You can quit the team tomorrow.” She laughed as she said the words that took her seven years to form.
I did just that.
Those moments may seem insignificant to the casual observer, but they have definitely written on the slate of who I am. I definitely notice that my children’s friends don’t tell them or me how beautiful I am. When I walk into a room and people stare, I wonder what they’re saying about how tall I am. When I’ve interviewed for teaching jobs, I always tell them up front, “I don’t coach basketball.”
Oh, and I still raise my right heel in pictures.
This is just too funny not to share...
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