Why Am I a Freak? (Why I don't like basketball and animal biscuits)

If I'm approached in the street by a stranger and told how good I must be at basketball one more time, I might just fold that stranger up and take a three point shot with his contorted body right under a passing truck.

OK, maybe I wouldn't go that far. I might well scream, though. You see, I'm not very good at Basketball. I don't even like the game. I've never watched a whole game all the way through. Even when my parents took me to see the Harlem Globetrotters as a child, I was bored. And they had trampolines. TRAMPOLINES, PEOPLE!

I succumbed to the peer-pressure a few times, though. In high school, I joined the Basketball team and rapidly found out I was better suited to Rugby. At least it seemed that way from the extraordinary number of opposition players missing skin and teeth. Oh, and the amount of time I spent on the bench.

But, when there was an opposition player really tearing us apart, coach knew what to do. Inside a couple of minutes, that hotshot would be laying on his backside twitching and I'd have a referee pointing me to the showers - usually in a very animated fashion. It wasn't that I set out to hurt people, though. It's just that I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know the difference between screening, blocking and charging (and still don't). Since I had to play, coach took advantage of my considerable ham-fistedness.

When I was in the Army, I played a whole season in the local competition with the base team. I'd improved, though, and became a valuable member of the team. I still knocked people around a bit and got benched a lot for said knocking, but I led the entire competition in rebounds.

By the way - I don't really know what a rebound is, but it's one of two things. Either it's catching a ball that bounces off the backboard or it's shoulder charging someone so that they bounce into the crowd. Since that last one was frowned upon, I'm pretty sure it's the first. For the record, though, I led the league in both. I don't remember ever scoring one basket, though.

The truth of the matter is that I don't like Basketball at all. I don't like to see kids with their hats on sideways wearing giant pants and speaking with an American accent. Especially since I'm in Australia. But more than that, I just plain don't like watching or playing the game at any level. I don't begrudge the sport - my son enjoys the game - and I've never had any truly bad experiences. It wasn't that I was bad at it, either. When I decided to learn some rules, I became quite useful.

So what is it that put me off? I put it down to society's double standards and pressures around height.

I'm two metres tall. That's around 6'7" for Americans and older folk. Or four-and-a -half cubits for ancient Romans and any members of the Rolling Stones that may be reading this.

If you're still having trouble putting that together, that's the same height as Andrew Gaze and Michael Jordan. It's also seven inches taller than the average Australian (That's almost half a cubit!). So, I'm regularly seen as some kind of freak. When you think about it, I suppose it's true. If a man is only four-ish cubits tall (I'm starting to like cubits - the rest of you can use 5'4" or 163cm), he'd be viewed as a little unusual, too. He'd probably even be typecast as a jockey or a chimney-sweep.

So, why aren't there any four cubit tall, squeaky voiced guys complaining that complete strangers that strangers tell them they'd look great in multi-coloured silk? The answer is simple. A complete stranger wouldn’t do that. Some self centred teenage jerk might for a cheap laugh, but no-one respectable would.

I've never seen an old lady in a supermarket walk up to a dwarf and say "Excuse me, I can't bend down. Can you get that jar of coffee off the bottom shelf for me?" It's just not socially acceptable.

It's not socially acceptable to tell a skinny stranger with an Afro that he'd make a great toilet brush. It's not acceptable to tell a catatonic kid's family that they should enter him in a staring contest. And nor should it be. Those are things that weigh on the minds of the people they're aimed at. It may be less dramatic to draw attention to a short person's height, but it is no less damaging to them emotionally.

So, why is acceptable to draw attention to a tall person's differences? It's even OK to do it loudly and publicly. A case in point is the loud "You're just f-in' HUGE!" I once got from a complete stranger at a party. Immediately, all eyes are on the big guy in the middle of the room. And it's not like you can hide behind someone. Unless the Harlem Globetrotters have turned up. But with all the snazzy uniforms and trampolines, I guess that's about the only time a freak like me doesn't get noticed.

So, next time you think about drawing attention to a stranger's height, have a think about the effect it may have on them. You might even pick the wrong person to ask at exactly the wrong time.....

"Say, you're tall. You'd be a good basketballer."
"Say, you're ugly. You'd make a great gorilla biscuit mould."