If my fairy godmother were to land on my shoulder and grant me three wishes, my first wish would probably be the ability to change my own size. (That is, if she survived the experience… I am Australian and therefore tend to reflexively swat at things that land on me. I made myself really popular once at a Buddhist retreat by arriving, sitting down, and then loudly saying to Emergency Contact, “Kill it, kill it, kill it!”. I was referring to a mosquito the size of a mouse that had landed on a part of my shoulder I couldn’t reach. They all looked at me in horror, but seriously, if that thing had started sucking, I would‘ve been a desiccated husk within three minutes).
I would ask to be able to reduce my size because, at this stage in life, there are few advantages in being large. Not none, few.
I am not obscenely large, and when I stand among ‘the kids’ these days, I’m probably closer to an average height than I‘ve ever been. The kids are tall but they have this lean, thin, flexible thing going on, whereas I am, well, broad and deep and inflexible. The type of broad and deep that can only come with age (and food and beer).
You may be saying to yourself, “ah, stop your whinging”, but listen up.
Depending on nationality of the make, I take between a size 13 - 15 shoe… or I would if there were ever any left in the shop. I think the averages have moved and the shops haven’t twigged.
Also, XXL is so hard to find. You can find the crap, boring shirts easily because no one wants them, but the amount of nice stuff I see in Medium and Large that just hangs there untouched is galling. It only takes two other guys to like the same stuff that I do and be roughly the same shape, and there goes an entire season’s wardrobe. And I live in a city of five million people, so there’s always two other guys ahead of me.
I don’t find many genuinely comfortable cars.
For a while there, I used to work hard at getting the bulkhead seat for international flights. They are typically between row 48 and 52 on a Boeing 747-400 and I liked seat A or J.
I tell you this because I don’t guard that information jealously, any more.
Whilst it was good to get the legroom, every other big bloke had worked this out as well. You invariably ended up sitting three abreast with two other guys whose shoulders were also wider than their seat. At dinner time we’d have to coordinate who was going to lean forward to have a bite. Middle first, then the two outsides, then middle, then outsides.
Talking of international travel; when I’m in Asian countries it just becomes ridiculous. My workmates in Hong Kong actually called me Mr Incredible or Buzz Lightyear. They thought it was funny to see how many of them they could hang off me. Sort of like some amenable, semi-intelligent beast of burden.
I’m expensive to feed and water, and I am regularly at private dinner parties where the portions are dainty and I end up scrounging in the kitchen when I should be swapping witty bon mots.
I can’t turn around in my own bathroom without cracking something and even supposedly “high” cupboards are at head cracking height when I stand up under an open door. (Emergency Contact finds there is nothing more amusing than watching me stand up underneath something and hearing the crack, followed by the swearing). Kitchen benches are too low and couches are rarely deep enough for me to lounge in.
When exercising, training partners tend to go flying if there is a sudden release or application of my mass.
Actually, I’m not complaining about that one. That’s usually hilarious. There’s this thing called a “three man pull-up“. When you’re out in the wild and you’re doing your running and stuff and it comes time to do pull-ups, two of you hold a hand each of the person lying down. The two standing brace themselves and the puller lifts themselves into the air, like a lying down chin-up without a bar. My trainer likes us to go till failure, so when you are the puller-upper, you get to your last possible one and then suddenly let go. My old training partner was about 60% of my weight. I’d let go and, in the periphery of my vision, I’d watch him fly off like a champagne cork. It never got old.
Three times a week I hear someone say, “Get Nick to help you. He can carry that.” It’s nice for the simple male ego, it’s not so good for the aging back or work priorities.
I’ve lost count of the number of times an evening’s been ruined by an idiot with a keenly honed short-guy-complex who has decided that I’m the bunny he’s going to use to prove the world wrong. There’s no good way out of this one. You either become a bully, or beaten up.
But, little guys are like this for good reason.
Real, heterosexual women don’t care about little guys. They’re polite about it, but they just don’t trust or like them. It must really get up little guy’s noses (If you can get the angle right. It’s quite difficult to do, all the way down there. Oh, stop, my sides.). If you are a smaller bloke reading this, I apologise, but it’s got nothing to do with any of us.
You didn’t choose to be little (and deformed and angry) and I’m not bragging because it’s nothing I’ve got control over either (In my world, you can only brag about things you‘ve got some control over). But if she’s told you, “no, I like you that way. You’re more efficient and like a teddy-bear”, you’ve just been handed the consolation prize.
She is not looking at you and sub-consciously registering, “when angry hordes come over the hill for my children and my food, I’m safe because I have brute-boy over there”.
She has to consciously dig around for modern reasons why you are useful, like, “He‘s got an excellent head of hair. His stand-up comedy is very well-timed.“
Having to appeal to rational thought is a serious handicap in the mating game.
Another upside to being large is that if you are used to carrying yourself around, you are usually, incidentally, quite strong. It came in handy yesterday in one of those one-in-a-million incidents.
I was driving through an area that is not filled with the crème-de-la-crème of society. A good way to illustrate this, and I’m not kidding, is the fact the local pub was advertising “Bogan Bingo.” A little way up the road I saw an angry, angry conversation between what I guessed was mother and daughter. Daughter was gesticulating in such a way as to suggest, “I know it’s a ridiculous situation, but you are not helping!” and pointing at her small son.
Her five-ish-year-old was bent over at right-angles with his head wedged in a fence designed to keep school kids from throwing themselves into the street and under your wheels. It was the type of area where it’s not so surprising to see people with their heads wedged in things.
This was a job for Super Grey Area. (Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a guy with an appreciation for the subtleties in an argument. We‘re saved!)
I was going to help.
At worst, I could protect the kid’s head from being knocked off by passing traffic by positioning my car sensibly and calling the fire brigade. Or, I could use my jack to part the bars and grease up his ears with oil to facilitate his escape.
Or, I could walk up to the bars, pull them apart with my bare hands, push the child’s head down into the gap and back into his grateful mother’s arms.
Which is what I did.
I then dusted my hands off, said something along the lines of, “Nothing to it ma’am, all in a days work,” strode back to my car and drove off… giggling like a huge, self-satisfied 14-year-old girl.
