TRANSCRIPT
I went into puberty very, very late. Sixteen years old, very, very late compared to my peers. Often, I was a very small physical boy amongst peers who were much taller men. I was one of the most small kids in my whole grade of 150 boys. In my grade, 150 or so, I think I was in the lowest maybe two or three of them.
Now, the strange irony that I experienced is that I did grow, and I grew a lot. I grew about a foot in maybe five years, but I really started growing at around sixteen and a half. So, a foot, about that much I grew. I went from being absolutely one of the shortest to absolutely one of the tallest, and now six feet four, 193, 194 centimeters. I grew until I was twenty-one, maybe almost twenty-two years old.
I learned a lot of lessons from being such a late grower, being one of the shortest to becoming one of the tallest. One of the big things I learned is that the world most definitely treated me very, very differently when I became taller, and I’d like to talk about that.
The first thing that I learned along the way is that when I started to grow, people started treating me much more respectfully. They treated me like I was smarter, like I had better things to say, like my ideas were valid, like I was someone who was worth listening to. I remember it just jumped out at me. This is not fair. This is crazy. It’s a real privilege, and part of me loved it because I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m being listened to. People are finally respecting me.” But another part of me was like, “Screw you guys, this is [ __ ]. Why is it that for so many years nobody paid attention to me?”
I thought it had something to do with the essence of me. All those years when nobody was listening to me in school, in my family, even. I remember I’d raised my hand in class and give an answer or say something that I thought was insightful, and no one would even listen to it. It just was like ignored, or people would even giggle or smirk or laugh if what I thought was too creative. Even this happened a few times. I noticed it that people would smirk or not pay attention to what I’d say. The teacher would just move on to the next point after I’d make some comment.
But someone else in the class, some boy who was, let’s say, much taller—because I remember there was this one boy who was a lot taller who did this several times—he was clever enough to realize that I said smart, insightful things, and he would steal my ideas essentially. He would plagiarize them. He would never give me credit for them, not directly when I said them. He wouldn’t acknowledge them, but he would later say them. It was like he was collecting my thoughts. He would later say them, and people would say, “Oh, smart.” And then we’d have discussions. I remember the class would have discussions about his comments, which were really my comments.
At the time, I think also part coming out of my family where I was so devalued, disrespected. My father, a tall guy, was very competitive with me emotionally, so couldn’t really acknowledge my value in a lot of ways. I developed a lot of insecurities and an inferiority complex because I wanted him to love me. I needed to believe his perceptions of me, and I transferred that to other areas of my life. So, I didn’t even realize it necessarily had to do with my height in school, but suddenly I grew, and when I started saying things, people listened. People respected me. Now, not this other boy who was stealing my ideas. Suddenly, I was considered an original thinker, a creative thinker. You’re intelligent.
I remember thinking this is wrong because I’m receiving the privilege. It’s kind of nice, but it’s wrong.
Then there was another incident that happened. This is one specific incident that really made me take note of how much more people respected me when I got taller. I was a track athlete all four years of high school. I ran track, ran the hurdles, did long jump, high jump, triple jump. In my first two years of high school, I was a little, little boy, very small boy running and jumping and competing against bigger, taller guys. Compared to them, I wasn’t very good. I noticed compared to people who were my height and weight, I was pretty good, but there were very few people who were my height and weight. So, I did not do very well, never really won events, lost, came in last a lot. It was painful, but since I loved sports, I loved running and jumping and other sports, I did it anyway.
Often, what I did to give myself some peace was I competed against myself. I worked really, really hard. I trained really, really hard, did a lot of stretching and running and jumping and lifting. Did everything I could to improve, and I did consistently improve, but I really didn’t capture the attention of my teammates or my coaches.
Then, junior year of high school, I really started to grow, and I started doing better. I started becoming more competitive, occasionally started winning events, winning races, winning jumping competitions. I remember my track coach, in fact, he came to me once and he pulled me aside and was such a kind tone in his voice. I don’t remember if he put his arm around me, but he might have. But he said to me, he said, “Dan,” because I went by Dan back then, he said, “Dan, you know, I’ve been watching you for three years, and I really noticed a change in you this year.” He said, “You know, this year I noticed you really started working a lot harder and training a lot harder, and your scores, your numbers now reflect that hard work. I just want to note to you, you are an example of what happens when somebody changes their attitude. They really do better in life, and it’s a good lesson for life.” I remember I didn’t say anything to him then. I didn’t confront him. I didn’t say what came to my mind. I was a polite kid. I was a people pleaser in a lot of ways. I wanted him to like me and love me and respect me, and I didn’t want him to disrespect me.
But I remember what I thought, and what could be summarized in one word: [ __ ]. [ __ ]. I didn’t work any harder. Third year of high school, junior year, I’ve been working hard all along. The only difference is I grew. I got taller. I got stronger. I went into puberty. I got bigger. It’s a lot easier to do better in competition in a sport that values height and strength and being bigger when you are those things. And I remember thinking how interesting. He didn’t notice that I’d been working hard all the way the same. Maybe even I was working less hard my third year because I didn’t have to work as hard. It was simply easier.
One final example I have of people treating me differently when I grew was girls. Girls started to notice me when I grew. Suddenly, I was considered good looking, attractive, a catch, valuable. They liked me more. They listened to me more. They paid more attention to me. They wanted to spend more time with me. They wanted to date me. They wanted to go out with me. They wanted to be my friend. They were curious about who I was. When I was a tiny kid, well, I was not noticed at all. I was just sort of a small boy who was sort of not a romantic object, not a sexual object. And when I was small, it was kind of painful. It was like, “Oh, I’m just sort of passed over. I’m considered low status.” And suddenly, I became higher status just because I grew.
I remember thinking at the time again, I grew. I like this. This is great. I’m getting attention finally. I’m getting the attention I have craved. I wasn’t getting it in my family. It’s nice to get it externally at least. But I also remember thinking this isn’t fair because on a deeper level, I wanted to be seen for me, me as a self, me as a being, a true being on the inside.
Inside was quite a separate thing from Daniel the tall person or Daniel the short person. To me, I felt like the exact same person. It’s just that my body changed. And I remember thinking, “What crap is this? This is not fair.” I liked it, but I still noticed it because I grew so late.
Well, I guess as I conclude, I want to share about something that inspired me to make this video. And that’s something I’ve read about in the news: that now surgeons are offering this procedure for men who are short, where they can actually physically become taller. They break their legs. I think it’s their femur, the long upper bone of your leg. They break it, I think that’s the one, and they put something in it that stretches it out, extends it, expands it. And then you have to re-heal that broken bone, do all this physical therapy to learn how to walk again. And I think they might even do this procedure a few times. Like, you break it, you learn how to walk again, you know, you do the healing, and then they break it again. Horrible, physically traumatic experience and very expensive too—fifty thousand dollars, something like that. But then the guys become taller, and they were quoting different guys in these articles, sometimes even with their pictures, saying, “Yeah, I was a small guy. I was five foot five, and now I’m five foot nine. Now I’m five foot ten.” They can actually grow like this much, grow. Actually, they just expand their height.
I don’t know if I would actually call it growth, but in a way, I can kind of understand why they would do this. Let’s just say hypothetically I had never grown. Would I have considered that? Maybe, I hope not. I think the part of me that hopes not is the part of me that thinks if I had remained a small man forever, that I would have done the thing that I actually ended up having to do anyway, which was learning to love myself on the inside. Learning lessons that I wasn’t allowed to learn in my childhood family system because it threatened my parents too much. Learning to respect myself, care about myself, be curious about who I really am, explore myself, honor myself, grieve the traumas of my childhood, the emotional traumas. Not just replicate traumas by breaking my bones physically to expand myself so I become externally more lovable, but instead become more internally lovable.
And I think this is the key for me. Yeah, I got tall. Yes, I got this external societal respect. People considered me more valid, more, you know, more attractive, more sexy, more this, more smart, you know, more valid as a person, higher status. But actually, none of it really did point the light on what I needed to do more importantly, because being tall didn’t help me love myself more. Maybe it was even a distraction in some way, because it was like, “Oh, I don’t need to have to focus on the inside because I’m getting all this external love and attention instead.” And I eventually figured this out. I need to go within. I need to be celibate. I need to not look for love on the outside, look for societal approval, look for career and status approval and money. I need to pull away from a lot of that. I need to do my internal homework and grow there.
[Music]