6’3″ looms large in my mind. That was my father’s height and, it my adolescent mind, it was how tall I was supposed to be.
I never reached it. I topped out at 5’11 and 3/4″. No matter how straight I stood at any and all doctor’s appointments, I could never reach the full six feet. My friends later told me, “When you were a kid and you said that you were going to be six three, we never believed you anyway.”
It was a bit of a wish. I hit puberty so late that, honestly, I thought that I was owed something. In my mind, I thought I’d be one of those guys who, while looking back and giving a speech after having won a slam dunk contest or reflecting on his new found fame as the world’s biggest action star, would say, “Until junior year, I was five foot two but then senior year I became the man you see before you today.” Now, no one really talks like that and you don’t get to make a speech after winning a slam dunk contest but you get it.
The reality was much simpler. I grew pretty steadily to my full height. It just happened a few years after everyone else. End of story.
My English grandmother’s maiden name was Bowring. It’s as rare a last name as Penty. One of my English cousins told me it was French. I don’t know where he got that from but I believe it because it sounds likely, he’s the one in Europe, and, hell, why not?
I spend Thanksgiving with the Bowrings that were born in America (my second cousins). Like me, they have deep set eyes and pale skin. We have the same hands. And two of them are well over six feet tall. My mother used to tell me, “You’re a Bowring,” like my father and I’d be as tall as they are.
Nope.
It’s funny, the roll of the genetic dice. Jim and Joe Bowring were 6’5″ and 6’4″ respectively. Their younger brother Sam is 5’10”. My hair loss is pretty similar to my paternal grandmother’s brothers Tony and Reg Bowring, judging from photos (their other brother Fred had a full head of thick curly hair until the day he died, not sure how that happened).
While I can’t articulate or enumerate the standards by which women are scrutinized, I stand by the fact that men have two: hair loss and height. All things considered, I’m still rather fortunate in this regard. Its gradual departure has helped me make peace with my hair loss. And it’s only the vanity of small differences that I remember my missing quarter inch. I’ve been mistaken for being over six feet tall and I’ve had male friends shorter than I pull me aside and tell me, “Man, you don’t even know…”
By the end, because of old age and his posture, my father was the same height as me, perhaps shorter. I’m a mix of my parents and depending on how you catch me, I can look like either. I’ve heard it said (by Christopher Walken, don’t let the attribution affect the truth) that we become our fathers. And when I see pictures of myself and the way that I stand or hold my arms, I see my dad. I see him every time I look down at my hands, at our weird index fingers and gnarled knuckles. We both walk fast because of our long stride, too fast for a lot of people.
What the hell does three and a half inches matter anyway?
