Dain bramage

Last night, I whammed my head so hard that I went reeling, bounced off my van and fell to the pavement. I was stepping up onto a sidewalk at a little shopping center and cracked my head against a thick wooden sign that jutted down from the eaves. Completely dark, of course, so I didn't even know the sign was there and was caught totally unawares.

It was so sudden. I fell backward off the curb onto the hood of my van, clutching my head. Then, because I apparently wasn't hurt enough, I hurled myself to the gritty asphalt so I could collect strawberries on my knees.

I'm okay today, I think, though my wife keeps shining flashlights in my eyes. I've got a knot on my head and a sore neck and that all-over shocky-stiff feeling you get the day after a car wreck.

I'd just been telling my mom earlier in the day how I'd whipped the last of my niggling health complaints (three successive colds, wrenched back, wrenched knee, pulled tooth), and was feeling great for a change. So, naturally, I go out and walk headfirst into some lumber.

Ugly and Unfriendly, Inc.

As a work-at-home dad, I'm always on the lookout for items that help justify my decision to remain unemployed -- oops, I meant self-employed -- and a couple of new publications do just that.

One is a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which found that attractive people tend to make more money than their more homely counterparts. The other is a self-help book by Tim Sanders called "The Likeability Factor: How to Boost your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams."

This is just the kind of workplace pressure I don't need. To become a success, to even get paid as much as the next guy, I need to be handsome and likeable? I'm sorry, but that's asking too much. Better that I continue to work alone at home, where I can be as unkempt and unfriendly as usual.

The Federal Reserve study found that attractive people tend to earn 5 percent more per hour than average-looking folks, after factoring out other variables like education and experience. Worse yet, the researchers found a "plainness penalty" of 9 percent less per hour, punishing those with below-average looks. The worst penalty hit women who were obese, who were paid 17 percent less per hour than slim women. Tall men, on the other hand, scored a slight "height premium" for each inch they towered over the national median.

The Fed said these differences in earning might result from differences in self-confidence or social skills. Or, it could be plain old discrimination.

The government should study this topic more carefully, because I know we all have questions. For example, I personally am abnormally tall. Does that mean I've been paid extra all these years? I don't think so. As I become increasingly obese, does that cancel out my height? Does my lifelong attachment (har!) to facial hair work against me?

In general, can the "beauty premium" be proven to exist, and can we find ways to mitigate such discrimination? Do short, fat, homely people have a class-action lawsuit here? Can an "extreme makeover" result in a promotion? Can we now argue that plastic surgery is a legitimate business expense and should therefore be tax-deductible?

Meanwhile, Sanders, an author and motivational speaker, got lots of media attention for his book, which stresses smiling and listening and empathy and appreciation for others and similar such "likeable" traits.

This would seem to be good news for those suffering the "plainness penalty." Maybe you can't change your face, but you can plaster a smile upon it. Maybe it's too late to grow taller, but you can grow more empathetic to your co-workers. People will say, "You know, old (insert your name here) is ugly as a mud fence, but he sure is friendly!"

Likeability's not for me. If I started acting likeable in a workplace, colleagues would want to "share" things with me and tell me their personal problems and generally have conversations. Who needs that grief? From there, it's only a short leap to co-workers selling me pounds of band candy that would make me even fatter, which could affect my earnings. Frankly, I can't afford the cut in pay.

Yes, these two publications give me all the ammunition I need in my ongoing battle to remain a grumpy househermit. Clearly, the corporate world has hung out a sign that says, "Ugly Old Grouches Need Not Apply."

That's good enough for me. I know when I'm not wanted. I'll stay home.

It's a small world for the tall

It takes a big man to admit he's too tall.

But I stand stooped before you today to say I've been too tall for decades, and height's not all it's cracked up to be.

I've been thinking about this a lot since reading an article that said tall people make more money. A new study, first reported in the "Journal of Applied Psychology," found that each inch of height means about $800 more a year in pay, which adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a lifetime.

"These findings are troubling," said lead researcher Timothy Judge of the University of Florida. "With few exceptions, such as professional basketball, no one could argue that height is an essential ability for job performance."

The researchers analyzed four studies in the United States and Great Britain that followed thousands of people as they grew up. And up and up. They found that taller people were perceived as more competent, and suggested this attitude comes from our evolutionary past, when size and strength were important to survival.

I believe this study has several shortcomings. (Ha!)

First of all, as a tall person, I see no evidence that I'm paid more than my peers. In fact, there have been times in my so-called career when I could barely afford enough food to fuel my oversized engine.

Secondly, I've never found that people perceive me as being more competent, especially once they've gotten to know me.

Third, the study doesn't account for people like me, who work at home. Most people I encounter through work have no idea that I'm 6-foot-5. To them, I'm merely a disembodied voice over the phone or a snitty little e-mail message.

Finally, the study overlooks the daily hardships faced by the overly tall. If there is a "height dividend" hidden in the pay scales of America, then it's only because it's expensive and inconvenient to be much over average size.

Take, for example, clothing. When I had a regular job that required me to wear decent clothes, I easily spent $800 a year more than my colleagues for clothes that would fit my elongated frame.
(Now, working at home, I usually wear my one-size-fits-all bathrobe, so it doesn't matter so much.)

Or cars. Buying a car is traumatic enough when you can fit into any little sedan on the lot. But when I shop for a vehicle (or even rent one), my first priority is not engine or color or reliability. It's "can I fit?" I go to an auto dealer and try on cars.

The whole world is designed for people of average height or shorter. Do normal-sized people duck through doorways? Fold into thirds to fit into an airline seat? Get decapitated by ceiling fans?

For extra-tall people, a good day is one in which we don't hit our heads on something. It's difficult to maintain the illusion of competence when you're doing the ooch-ouch dance over the latest goose-egg on your skull.

Speaking of dancing, it's something tall people should only do alone, such as while in a shower where the spray hits at navel-height. Unless you can find an equally tall partner, you'll just look silly on the dance floor. When there's a big height difference, "dancing cheek-to-cheek" takes on a whole new meaning.

So you, the normal-sized public, should ignore those vestigial evolutionary perceptions about height and survival. They simply don't hold true anymore.

Don't put us tall folks on a pedestal. We'll only hit our heads.

How many light bulbs does it take to change clothes?

Sometimes, illumination isn't such a good thing.

I recently changed a light bulb (insert joke here), and it's going to end up costing me money.

That's because the light bulb was in my walk-in closet. When I replaced it, I discovered that the dead bulb dated from before we moved into this house, four years ago.

The previous homeowner had used a dim bulb -- 40 watts, something like that. I installed a new 100-watt bulb and the closet suddenly was filled with bright light.

Here's what I discovered in this newly illuminated space: None of my clothes match. And many of them bear the faint traces of old food stains.

I also found the closet was covered in dust and pocket lint and other litter that had accumulated there in the half-light. Much of this detritus was on my clothes.

How did this occur? Well, for one thing, I've essentially been dressing in the dark for the past four years -- who knew? For another, I work at home, which means my clothes don't get trotted out into the daylight very often.

Those of us who work at home tend to wear the same items over and over. A bathrobe, for instance. A favorite pair of ratty jeans. Ancient T-shirts announcing tours by long-dead rock stars. Sweats. If no one is going to see us all day, what difference does it make? Why not be comfortable?

On occasion, we work-at-home types must go out into the greater world, and this requires decent clothing. Then we have to sort through our closets for shirts and slacks and dress shoes. Preferably, these garments will have no major holes or stains or depictions of beer. But that's not easy to detect in a tight space lit only by a dusty 40-watt bulb.

Now that I've gotten a 100-watt look at my wardrobe, I find I must buy new clothes. This raises a fresh problem -- shopping.

I hate to shop for two reasons. One, I am a guy, and everyone knows guys have a genetic disposition against any kind of mall-trolling. Two, I'm a very large guy and my sizes are hard to find.

A typical clothes-buying excursion for me consists of frantically rifling through folded garments, trying to find something, anything, in size extra-large/tall, or XLT. (Doesn't XLT sounds like a racy car of some sort? Never mind.)

Stores don't carry that size. Oh, they might have a few items, but all the other XLT guys out there -- the ones who buy clothes more than once every five years -- have already snapped them up. As an XLT, I'm too large for your standard rack of clothes and not big enough for the Big-and-Tall men's stores, where you're required to have at least two XX's to even enter the wide door.

Shopping -- for an XLT guy who really wants to wear only rags anyway -- can be a frustrating, time-consuming experience that often results in the ingestion of large quantities of consoling beer.

My wife suggested I shop on-line, but I've had bad experiences there, too. Last winter, I splurged on a sweater on-line because it was on sale for half off. The color I selected was called something like "harvest gold." When the sweater arrived at my house, it turned out to be more like "autumn sneeze." Under fluorescent lights, it becomes "ultraviolet phlegm." It's not a garment I wear much, at least not anywhere that might have electric lights.

Since XLT clothes that aren't in funny colors tend to be expensive, changing that light bulb means I'll have to spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes if I ever expect to go out in public again.

But I've come up with a cheaper plan. I'm buying some 40-watt bulbs. Better to curse the darkness than to go shopping.

In fact, I think I'll put low-wattage bulbs throughout the house. Perhaps, in the resultant gloom, visitors won't be able to see the dust.

Towering achievements need right tools

You can't tell it from my mug shot, but I'm a big guy.

I stand 6-foot-5 in my sock feet and my weight hovers around 250, depending on what time of day I brave the scales and how many tacos I consumed the night before.

Before you ask, the weather up here is just the same as it is down where you are. And no, I didn't play much basketball. Too many injuries, too little talent, a vertical leap of four inches.

Most people think it's cool to be tall. In this country, we like our heroes to be big strapping fellows. We think of our movie idols as being tall, even if Alan Ladd had to stand on a box to kiss the heroine. We worship the pituitary cases who star in the National Basketball Association, though recent events have shown them to be a bunch of big babies.

There are times when height has its advantages. Seeing over crowds comes to mind. Changing light bulbs. Hiding my candy stash on the top shelf so my kids won't find it.

But nobody thinks of the disadvantages.

America is full of well-dressed guys who stand at the national average of 5-foot-9. The 2 percent of American men who are 6-foot-3 or taller can't buy off the rack. We have to search out the "tall" sizes ironically hidden away on a bottom shelf. Or, we go to "Big and Tall" shops, which are stocked with crawly double-knit pants and shirts in patterns that can be seen from the space shuttle. Apparently, the clothing industry thinks we're so desperate, we'll wear anything to keep from going around large and naked.

I avoid the clothing problem by working at home, where I can throw on the same raggedy jeans and T-shirts for days on end and nobody cares. I've worn a necktie only once in the two years since I left the workaday world. That was for a wedding and there was no avoiding the noose. Even that necktie said "tall" on the label. Bet you never considered that neckties come in sizes, but tall guys know. We wear a regular tie and it comes up short. We get the ends to match up, then go around all day looking like Oliver Hardy.

Working at home means doing the housework and that has its own disadvantages for the oversized. Most center around back pain.

Just as they don't make decent clothes for guys my size, they also forget us when they're designing household tools. I thought of this again the other day when I was vacuuming the house, stooped over, sweat dripping off the end of my nose. Your standard vacuum cleaner is designed for someone who stands maybe 5-foot-2. People that size can vacuum an entire house and the only time they'll bend over is to unplug the thing. (And even that can be avoided if you perfect the method of yanking the plug out of the wall from across the room.) But a person my size has to work bent at a 90-degree angle. Otherwise, the sucking end of the vacuum doesn't touch the floor, which pretty much defeats the purpose.

Brooms and mops come with standard 4-foot-long handles. A tall man spends much time using them, he ends up stooped over like a question mark.

Sinks are at crotch height for us big guys, which makes splashovers even more embarrassing. Dishwashers are practically on the floor. A front-loading clothes dryer requires a touch-your-toes maneuver and the open door is at just the right level to bark our shins.

I know what you're thinking: These tools are designed for women. The manufacturers assume women do all the housework, so they build the various labor-saving gizmos with them in mind. But recent surveys show men are doing more and more of the housework, and only some of the respondents were lying.

Somewhere out there, an entrepeneur is designing king-sized cleaning implements. I predict he or she will make a fortune. But it'll probably come too late for me. I'll be old and stooped by then and the current cleaning instruments will finally be the right size.

In the meantime, if you need a light bulb changed, I'm your man.

(Editor's note: This column is from 1999. The weight numbers have been changed to reflect current, sad realities.)