Tall girls

I see I am going to have to link to this article, if only to stop people from emailing me.

There are many drawbacks to being very tall in adolescence, but as an adult, the main one is that perfect strangers feel entirely free to treat you like a circus freak. People stop and stare at me. They point. They walk right up to me and ask me how tall I am. They ask me what size clothing and shoes I wear, and how much I weigh. They ask me about my dating life, particularly whether I go out with shorter men. (The answer to which, given that I live on the east coast, should be obvious.) People ask me my age, my ancestry, and what I like to eat. And if there's one thing everyone wants to know, it's whether I played basketball.

Yes, I played basketball. We all played basketball, okay? We didn't have any choice. Every gym coach we ever had thought that we were their salvation right up to the point where they saw our jump shot. The first thing any two of us do when we meet is make basketball jokes.

It's not particularly onerous--indeed, as soon as I see that questioning gleam in someone's eye, I go right ahead and say "6'2" and save us all a lot of trouble. But it does occasionally irk. Especially the pointing.