Such great heights.

Btws.
Tall Cousin has a name, Mark. I made it sound as though his only great achievement in life is his tallness when in fact he's very successful. And he actually is an amazing hunter, like with arrows I believe, which is quite a feat. Also, he isn't the only one with great height advantages in the family. He is by far the tallest, but my own sister in law is just under 6 feet tall, and if you look closely you'll see that Aunt Weisy has got the wing span of a condor. Cousin Lisa and Uncle Dennis both have height on their side as well. And my mother in law's five foot ten frame is nothing to take lightly. I was particularly awed by how tall 'tall cousin' was in comparison to his tall family. Especially since the tallest one in my family is my dad who just hits six foot one, and my grandmother is of the especially small side barely hitting four foot eleven.

My interest in great heights started with my brother, Houston, who at a very very young age was enamored with Robert Wadlow. Wadlow is the tallest man in the history of tall people. He was eight feet eleven inches tall. Actually, my brother Greg, Houston and I were always fascinated by any record breaking feat. The largest, the smallest, the most, the greatest. We would sit together, Houston, Greg, and I, and pour over the Guinness record books. Always wondering which records we would have a chance at breaking. If I could just quit the annoying nail biting habit would I be able to grow my nails out to curling lengths? None of us will ever reach the heights of these people, but boy, what would life be like to be so extraordinary? I think some people think we have a freak show interest in these subjects, my brothers and I. We don't see it like that, we aren't curious because these record breakers don't seem real to us. It's actually because they are human, they are just like us only better. And we are equally fascinated by the geniuses, the greatest poets, songwriters, artists. And in a different way we are fascinated by the other-worldly and the animals, the aliens, the Sasquatches, the dinosaurs, the Coelocanth. We are, simply put, fascinated by the exceptional. As kids we dreamed of being so out of the ordinary that we would be written about in a book, so intelligent we would defy what everyone knew about the human brain, to discover something no one had ever even dreamed could exist. We were living vicariously through the lives of these exceptional human beings. If it weren't for Robert Wadlow would we have been content to stop at average? Probably, and average just wouldn't have been as much fun.

Thank you Mr. Wadlow, for being so damn tall and giving us someone to look up to.