The Tall and the Short of It

I have two teenage sons that have achieved the height of 6’. It has been good in that I now have three tall housemates who can reach all the tall things for me. On the downside, I had to give my sons a talking to this week in relation to my kitchen. I need them to put things away in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way as I do. Years of experience have taught me that if I put away pitchers, blenders, food processors, etc. with the handles facing outward, I can use the tongs or a spatula to get them down. If the handles are pointed in, I need a stool or a tall person to get them down. I also use the cords of appliances to wiggle them out of cupboards which means the bundled cords need to be facing the front. They don’t even think about it. They can just reach their monkey arms up there and grab things, hence the talk. Of course, they have encountered some challenges such as dusting the chandeliers with their hair, needing denim colored socks to disguise the fact that their pants are too short…again (that’s mostly Nathan), spending forever wandering around the grocery store looking for rock salt because they didn’t think to look on the bottom shelf (even though I told them exactly where to find it), you know, tall people problems. So pros and cons.

Now Nathan’s goal is to be taller than Daniel. I asked him a couple of weeks ago if he was taller than Daniel and his response was, “I certainly hope so!” He was still ½” shorter than Daniel then. Now they are neck in neck…or head in head. It is a definite possibility that Nathan will achieve his goal. Luckily, Daniel is in no way threatened by the thought of having his younger brother be taller than he is. He’s a good sport about the whole thing.

On the opposite end of the yardstick, Matthew is just glad that he’s not the shortest person in his grade anymore. He has embraced his lack of stature and jokes about it. However, he would really love if all the servers at the restaurants would quit giving him a kiddie cup and a packet of crayons…