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I reached a point on my last vacation when I thought the unthinkable – “I wish I was shorter.’’
I was creeping down a passage to reach a pharaoh’s tomb, almost duckwalking to keep my back and shoulders from scraping the roof. If I straightened up, I probably would have knocked myself out by bashing the stone ceiling. The passage seemed like it would never end until 100 feet later I reached the burial chamber. I stood up and exhaled. Phew!
“Let’s hear it for the little guys,’’ chortled a 5-foot-8 tourist who overheard me whining on the way down the tunnel.
Ancient Egypt was not intended for 6-foot-4 men. The average man in 2000 B.C. was about 5-foot-4 and woman about 5-2. King Tut was somewhat tall at 5-6; Ramesses II was a giant at 5-9. If I had lived in those times, I would have been the Andre the Giant of the Nile Valley, the Manute Bol of the pyramids. I would have put the high in hieroglyphics.
This inconvenience faded as soon as I crept back up the passage and into the 106-degree heat. I was an erect homosapien again, and children hawking trinkets resumed giving me peculiar looks, as if to say, “What did they feed this guy as a child?’’ My mind wandered to one of my father’s favorite lines: “Kill another cow; Jimmy is home.’’
It wasn’t always this way. I was a 5-7 freshman guard on the Morristown JV basketball team, a 5-9 sophomore with no muscles, and a 6-1½, 155-pound senior, the tallest guy on the team in 1975, the forward who resembled Gandhi in sneakers.
“Look at the size of you,’’ a teammate remarked at our 50th class reunion. “Why didn’t we win more basketball games?’’
My answer was simple as I pivoted away from my dearth of talent. I graduated at 17 years old. During my first year in college, I grew 2 inches and gained 25 pounds. The joke was the Italian kids (or insert any nationality here) were shaving in the sixth grade; the Irish kids had to wait until college.
Height has always been an advantage. I have a sightline at concerts and shows. Supermarket shoppers ask me to retrieve items from the top shelves. I fill the back row in every group photo.
These are gifts from my maternal grandfather. My father and his three brothers were in the 5-9 to 5-11 range same as my two brothers. But Bernard Maxwell was 6-1 or 6-2. Genetics show 80-90 percent of your height depends on forebearers. Of my 43 maternal cousins and 20 paternal cousins, I’m the outlier at 6-4.
I wouldn’t trade my size for anything, but intermittently I’ve had this regret about being smaller. I never wore hand-me-down pants from my older brother. It’s difficult to hide in a crowd. Cheap airline fares are never an option because extra legroom is never offered.
The air travel industry has not been good to oversized mammals. In the last 30 or so years, it has reduced legroom from about 35 inches down to 31. Seats have narrowed by about 2 inches down to 16-17 inches.
For my latest comeuppance, I blame Air France.
Two years ago, it shuffled airplanes and reassigned Mary and me from our adjoining seats with extra leg room for a 7-hour flight from Paris to Atlanta. My editor of 42 years – she lists herself at 5-foot-4 – can sit anywhere. I went from extra legroom to a center seat with two strangers.
My knees were buried against the seatback in front of me when a Darryl Strawberry lookalike took the aisle seat. His brother had played college basketball for Monmouth and Boston College in the ‘80s. Every name he dropped – PJ Carlesimo, Dave Gavitt, David Robinson — I knew. He was pleased that the conversation offset the boredom of the flight. Then a minor miracle percolated from the kindness of his heart. “Don’t worry,’’ said the basketball junkie. “I’m not going to make you sit in that middle seat the whole flight. We’ll swap.’’
Who knew God sent bald angels who were 6-foot-1? I survived the flight.
Fast forward to our recent Cairo to Paris connection. Air France pulled another switcheroo but Mary was waiting in the papyrus reeds. She called the airline and called out the seat switch, restoring my extra legroom.
On this trip, the flight time covered 13 hours. But with extra legroom, being tall wasn’t such a curse after all.
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/
