Raw Drip

In the mail yesterday amongst all the weekly ad circulars, I spied a new catalog I hadn’t noticed before – “Living XL”.

As I’ve mentioned before, Dick and I are not exactly “nomal” sized people. With Dick at 6′ 6″ and me at 6′ we’ve been living XL for quite a while now. But later, as I sat leafing through the new catalog, I was surprised to see that it’s not just an assortment of big & tall menswear, but rather an entire lifestyle catalog, not unlike the Pottery Barn catalog.

In addition to clothing, some of the products featured in the catalog’s table of contents include bathroom scales, dining room chairs, and bath sponges. Perhaps I’m stupid, but my initial thought was, “Why would me being tall require a special dining room chair?” Upon closer examination, I realized that the dining room chairs were built to withstand over 1,000 pounds. The bathroom scales were designed to register well over the traditional 300 lb maximum of most scales and the bath sponges were designed with extra long handles for cleaning those hard-to-reach areas, like feet. Suddenly it hit me. This was a catalog for the REALLY XL large person.

I am now convinced that my recent enrollment in Weight Watchers at Work combined with my recent request for the latest copy of the Rochester Big & Tall catalog for Dick must’ve dumped my name & address into some cross-referencing algorithm in a super computer, which ultimately pegged me as grossly obese. I know that many obese people may appreciate a catalog of such considerately designed items, but I can’t help feeling somewhat put-off at the implication that I should join their ranks because I’m overweight and tall. While I am still 40 lbs from my goal weight (and that’s 60 lbs from where I started my latest weight loss journey), I can’t help but feel that I am really NOT the target audience for this publication, hence my annoyance at ending up on the mailing list. I mean, isn’t it a pretty big leap to assume that anyone subscribing to a big & tall men’s clothing catalog or enrolling in Weight Watchers is seriously obese? Aren’t the obese stereotyped enough as it is? Besides, isn’t making that kind of a “big” leap, also wasting a lot of paper? It strikes me as being as much of longshot as sending the AARP enrollment kit to anyone buying gold lame shoes.

Of course my perspective (from waaaay up here…) is that this is just another insult in a lifetime of insults and assumptions. For instance, Dick has a major beef with most car makers. His favorite automobile lust object, the sexy little BMW Z3, is a relatively affordable option on the used car market and Dick can even get into it…if he moves his legs behind his ears. But driving it while sitting upright is an impossibility and, as you would suspect, the jaws of life and a tub of Crisco are required to get him out of the vehicle. It tends to be this way for him in most cars that offer bucket seats. He can fit into the Oldsmobuicks of the world with their roomy bench seating, no problem. But anything smaller and it’s going to be a life-threateningly tight fit.

For me, the bane of my existence is shoe makers and retailers who seem to ignore those of us with oil tankers for feet, stopping their size offerrings at 10. This makes my size 11 feet (I swear they were size 10 before I had children) nearly impossible to fit easily, cheaply or comfortably. And, note to you shoe maker people out there: please just assume that if I’m wearing a size 11, I probably don’t want 6 inch heels on my pumps. I don’t mind being the tallest girl in the room, but my husband doesn’t like it when I tower over him. I’ve found the only place those shoes seem to work for us is in bed, with my heels pointed at the ceiling.

Unfortunately for my supersized kids, several height calculators are predicting a lifetime of assumptions & insults for them, as well. In fact it’s already started. At barely 4, Adam is in the 110th percentile in height for his age group and towers over the other children in his Pre-K class at school. Tabitha, too, is in the 105th percentile in height for her age and routinely gets mistaken for a 4 year old, despite that fact that she’s barely 2 1/2. Unfortunately, the human brain seems to be conditioned to meter our responses to children based on a split-second assessment of their maturity soley based on their appearance. This often means strange looks in the grocery store when Tabitha uses her baby talk to stumble through a sentence. It also means school teachers who, despite their training and awareness, often treat my son as if he’s a 1st grade delinquent flunky, rather than the fidgety almost 4-year old he really is. Poor kids. I feel their pain.

Of course being really tall does have its advantages. I rarely need a step stool to reach anything in my kitchen. I can carry at least 30 lbs more weight than my shorter girlfriends and still look trim – although, admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to exploit that phenomenon. I also find that I can command attention in a room just by standing up; I’ve got stage presense that makes Obama look like an ass clown. I find this ability is particularly helpful if, like me, you’re in a career focusing on education. Even adult learners will silence their talking if you stand over them and give them the “teacher stare” that implicitly says, “Would you like to share your ideas with the rest of the class?” I doubt I’d be quite as effective employing this technique if it weren’t for the intimidation factor of my height.

I guess livin’ large isn’t all bad. I just wish there was TiVo for catalogs so I could order a petites catalog and somehow trick the algorithm into assuming I’m somewhere between extremes – maybe even something a bit closer to normal.