Tall

When I was teaching a little girl how to play the flute I momentarily forgot her surname.
“Don’t help me,” I said, “It will come back. It’s good to make myself remember.”
She, however, couldn’t bear to see an old lady struggling with a faulty brain.
“You just have to think, ‘tall people’. All of us are tall people.”
I was confused because I had lowered the music stand for her but had to concede that her Dad is very tall and sh is probably tall for her age. Her suggestion didn’t really help. If her name had been Longman, Talbert, Highham, Biggens, or even Giantonio, I might have understood but it wasn’t.

Being tall is quite a difficult thing to be, I believe. I can’t speak from personal experience, being known as ‘little Julia’ by my extended family when I was growing up but my Mum was always really conscious of being the tallest in the class. It marked her out as different and made her noticeable, whatever she did. She tried to be good but if there was ever a question she didn’t know it would be written on her face, which protruded above everyone else’s and the most sadistic teachers would then pick her out, so that everyone could laugh at her.

Being tall marked her out as different in other ways too. She was sitting with her Mum, the fearsome Doris and the headteacher of the school she was about to go to. Doris was a tiny Welsh powerhouse. I remember her as short when I was a child: we called her ‘little Nan.’
The headmistress looked at them and said, “She’s very tall. Is your husband tall?”
Doris, unusually, was caught off guard. Ted was not tall, either. Faced with an authority figure, she had no choice but to tell the truth, even though having to admit it was like a knife through the heart.
“Well, No! She’s adopted. My husband and I thought we couldn’t have children.”
What a moment that must have been in a five year old’s life. To find out that your younger sisters, your mum and your dad were not actually yours in such a public place with no opportunity for questions must have been very difficult.
Mum was never cross with Doris, who was always good about being open from then on in but she did blame her tallness.

It turns out that being tall makes you more susceptible to catching COVID-19 too. This information comes from a small epidemiological survey of 2000 patients at Manchester University. These type of studies should always be treated with caution and there is a tendency to leap to assumptions about the mechanisms at work but I am quite looking forward to the government’s next initiatives to incentivise people into being shorter.

Tall things are beautiful but sometimes they just need a bit more support.

This is something I’ve learnt from sunflowers.