Pros, cons of high-altitude life

The University of Kentucky has three 7-footers on campus.
By AMY WILSON
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Tall people have clubs. Short people have support groups.
That is all you need to know about heightism.
This year's University of Kentucky team has the most 7-footers ever assembled in its history, with Shegari Alleyne at 7 feet 3 inches, freshman Jared Carter at 7 feet 2 inches and Lukasz Obrzut at 7 feet, barefoot.
"I always have to duck," says Obrzut, who is talking about doorways.
You get used to it. Except now and again, says Nathan Popp, 25, a former Lexington Catholic basketball player who is 7-foot-1 and now works as a Shelbyville, Ky., elementary school instructional assistant: "When I'm not paying attention, I still hit my head."
You've got to wonder whether tall people get enough respect in a world that has made plenty of way for the girthier among us with wide-load chairs, seat-belt extenders and the advent of big-girl singles bars.
A select subset
Admittedly, the group of folks 7 feet and taller is a much more select subset, considering that 93.6 percent of adult men in the United States are 5-foot-3 to 6-foot-2. Six-two is downright squat if you're in the 7-foot category.
What exactly does 7 feet feel like?
It's a question Popp doesn't really know how to answer. He was taller than his 6-foot-7 father, Mike, when he was only 12. He had long since passed his mother, Brenda, who is 5-foot-7. She had to bring Nathan's birth certificate to the movies for a few years so she could still get the 12-and-younger admission price.
Mike Popp remembers that he and Nathan's mother agreed to put casts on Nathan's legs when he was 8. It was a way of controlling the growth plates, doctors said, and to help the boy handle the very real growing pains.
In adulthood, it's Nathan's knees that ache, and the demands of his height that linger.
Clothing crisis
"It's a really big crisis if you want to buy clothes," says Popp, who played college hoops at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. "You usually have to buy out of the big-and-tall catalog because they don't even have your size in the store."
He can't wear Old Navy. He can't squeeze into Abercrombie. He does not try to follow trends. He's glad if something's in his size.
When you're that tall, you know you can eat a lot and never fret. In a pre-basketball game ritual in high school, Nathan would eat just a medium-size pizza. A real meal could wait until after the game.
UK's Obrzut says other basketball players should be glad they don't have to play by NCAA rules, which require that the beds in basketball players' dormitories be outfitted the same as every other dorm on campus. Think twin beds, although everybody gets the extra-long kind.
Disadvantages
Obrzut, who is not complaining, only noting, says he doesn't sleep well with his legs hanging off the bed, but, you know, "college is only four years long."
Cars are ridiculously hard, Obrzut says. Clothes are stupidly expensive -- usually twice what everybody else pays. On planes, you have to ask for the bulkhead or the emergency row for more legroom. Walking on ice is a worry because, Popp says, "look how far I have to fall."
And the knees, which spend a lot of time folded up by regulation-size chairs, tend to hurt even before you hit 40, says Popp, who knows.
So, is it all short beds and creaky knees?
Not by a long shot.
Commands attention
Mike Heitz, a 7-foot Lexington, Ky., investment banker, says his height helps him command attention, which is a good thing in his business. He also says that "it gets the conversation going a lot of the times."
In studies, when any set of people is given a set of pictures and asked to judge, they always pick the tallest person, even the tallest baby, as the most attractive, competent and able. (This is not just a Western trend; it's even true in China studies.)
In 2003 U.S. employment studies, tall people were found to earn more money in their lives than their shorter co-workers. And get this: Each inch taller added $789 a year in pay.
Commenting on his height is not all about gawking. Popp's day is made when people come up to him in a crowded mall and say they've lost their mother or their friend or their kid.
"And I can usually find them."
And, we note, it's widely reported and generally suspected that 7-foot men have the pick of female companionship.
True?
"So I hear," says Popp, who then declines, ever so politely, to comment further.