Tall Girl Walking

My younger sister Whitney just started her junior year of high school and she has the same AP English teacher that I had when I was in school, Mrs Stro. While calling role, Stro read off the last name “Kerner” and proceeded to question my sister of my whereabouts. When Whitney told her that I go to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Stro replied, “Wilmington?! Oh, that town is way too small for Lia Kerner!”

Since kindergarten, I have always stood about a foot above everyone else, even most of the boys. Lia The Giant. My long fingers creep like spiders over the shoulders of my friends in all our pictures, my lanky legs and arms are always smacking into table edges, walls, chairs—I have the bruises to prove it. Though I am the third oldest child in my family, I am the tallest and am always being mistaken for the oldest. I can handle the clumsiness, the bruises just fine. What bothers me is the fact that my size transcends my physical appearance and projects onto other aspects of myself.

I can never seem to find shoes that fit, pants are never long enough and that seems to translate into my social life as well. I have always struggled to find that exact spot, that precise group of people with which I feel as If I truly belong.

Growing up, I had two older sisters that I was constantly trying to impress. I despised the concept of the annoying little sister, so I made a conscious decision to walk like them, talk like them, dress like them—be them, essentially. As a result, I’ve always felt and been told by others that I was mature for my age. Perhaps that is why I can never seem to find a nice, comfortable size in good friends.

There are several reasons why I feel I don’t belong. I don’t understand what all the college hype is about. I feel that because I am here to absorb as much knowledge as I can, earn the best grades and ultimately graduate with a competitive edge, I am the one that is here for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t come here for “…the night’s I’ll never remember with the friends I’ll never forget,” and for that, I have the hardest time finding my place on this campus. Am I “too old” for college? Did I outgrow that sense of exhilarating thoughtlessness long ago? Is it normal that I would rather talk to a senior citizen than one of my fellow college students at any given time? It is the members of my own generation that I feel I cannot relate to.

I think I lack the recklessness. At a young age, I became skilled in learning from others’ mistakes, so those that my older sisters made; I would observe and tell myself that that was exactly what I didn’t want to do. I think I was able to side-step a lot of the pit-falls of adolescence that way. I’ve never needed to try a cigarette to know they aren’t for me. Perhaps it’s that ache for adventure and experimentation that is essential in the formula for a normal college experience that I am missing. Regardless, yet again, I find myself sticking out, uncomfortably, amidst all the faces.

But I don’t find this seemingly eternal placelessness to be a bad thing. Sure, I am secretly anti-social but that doesn’t mean that I want to be alone forever. I am aware that college is just the beginning—there are so many people left for me to meet. I am not hopeless, I am determined to make the best of my life; use my height to help save the world, go on a cross-country tour teaching anti-social kids how to make friends. To be perfectly honest, things are looking up. You don’t have to feel bad for me, not only am I currently sporting a new pair of jeans that look really great, but these shoes aren’t pinching my feet and my both of my roommates this year stand two inches above the tip top of my head. Maybe I’m not as alone or as big as I had thought, maybe there is life out there, a bright future after all, for this lonely giant girl.