No I Don't Play Basketball...Do You Jockey Horses?

I'm tall.  Maybe you wouldn't know that from just reading this blog or from the title, but its true.  I'm pretty sure I've always been tall.  I have to say "pretty sure" because there was a time in my life when I didn't know I was tall.  The moment of realization was sudden and I remember it well.  It happened in the courtyard of my high school at the beginning of my senior year.  I was walking between C Hall and A Hall was was near the gazebo where my friends and I would eat our lunch.  My backpack was over my right shoulder and the weather was sunny and mild.  Like I said, I remember it well.

Anyway, it was the first week of school and I was noticing how many new freshmen were about.  They were everywhere--ours was the last small class and the classes to follow were getting bigger and bigger.  That year's freshman class was huge compared to ours.  And, like I said, they were everywhere.  The other thing I remember thinking was that not only where they, as I mentioned, everywhere, but they were also really small.  Like child small.  All of them.  Tiny.  Like little elves.

I remember stopping (and this is where my memory has probably taken the liberty of dramatizing the scene a bit) and looking around the seemingly endless traffic of freshmen students move past me.  It was like that scene in The Matrix where Neo is being shown the computer simulation for the first time.  And it dawned on me: These kids weren't "short".  I was "tall"! 

Duh.

The thing is, I didn't just wake up one morning and find myself suddenly a whole head taller than everyone around me.  Growth spurts are one thing, but I started walking across that courtyard as a totally average person who didn't--and didn't want to--stick out in a crowd, and I left that courtyard as "Ben" [hold arm above head with palm out flat to signify height and to which "Ben" you are referring to].

Its funny how we don't know stuff like that about ourselves.  Everyone around me knew I was tall.  But for some reason, I didn't.  I'd be willing to bet that people had even told me I was tall.  Especially because nearly every day since that moment someone has.  But I didn't see it about myself.  I had never really noticed.