A Short Story : The Land of Giants

I recently spent some time emailing and on the phone with a friend who has never physically met me, Dr Mark. We have known each other for some time but we have never really discussed anything other than what he does and when he can talk about it on the radio show I produce. Dr. Mark is a Ph.D., professor and director of a bioethics program on the east coast. He is a very positive and  persuasive person who will have to accept some credit for my flailing jump into this pool.

I will start the same way I did with Dr. Mark. In short, I'm short. Most days I am too busy to remember that fact of my life but there are those special occasions that always bring me back to the reality of this world we live in and the people in it. It is the ridiculous, humorous, stupid and sad occasions  I enjoy sharing with the hope that you can relate.

For several years I was the General Manager for The Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard. If you are younger than 50 you might need some help here. Fess Parker was the actor who played Davy Crockett in the 1950's and Daniel Boone in the 1960's. Fess is 6' 7", his son, a long time friend is 6' 6" and his daughter is 6' 5". This was the core of my supervisors, the owners........The Land of the Giants. I have great respect for this family because they had met me many times over the years long before I was hired by them to manage their business and never was height, my height, an issue.............. Except once.

On a Sunday afternoon I was enjoying a day off and the phone rang. Fess was calling to ask me to drive down to the winery, a 45 minute trip one way,  immediately to meet with him in his office. I was curious as to the issue at hand but he only wanted to talk to me in his office. I made the 50 mile trip in approximately 35 minutes using that time to mentally check the past couple of weeks for possible flaws in my management skills, vocabulary, etc. On arrival he was standing outside his office waiting for me. As I stepped into his office he slowly closed the door behind us and even slower, walked behind his desk and sat down. You know the feeling, "OK, just shoot me now and get it over with!"

He was never really a soft spoken man.  You knew when he was talking and he had your attention, but now he was talking very slow and quiet. He was explaining to me how an employee had complained about how I had treated them. Verbally abused them. The complaint has no other bearing on this story except that it is why he decided to talk with me. After giving me the purpose for the meeting he told me a story about a night out in Hollywood during the time he was still an A list actor. He was having dinner at a restaurant popular with the entertainment industry and was walking to his table when a very good looking lady (he says) watched him walk by and made a very ugly remark about his size. He told me he was humiliated and it took him weeks to get over the fact that some one judged him negatively because of his size. He continued to say that over the years it had been a hardship at times to be so tall.

At the end of his story he stood up and looked at me with a big smile and said that he hoped he had cleared up any issues I might have had with managing employees. That was my cue to get the hell out of his office. I did so quickly and never heard another word about my verbal abuse case, however, I had to hire a new employee for the tasting room the next week. Fess had a second meeting that Sunday.

I will never forget the lesson Fess taught me with his restaurant story. Thank God i'm not tall and people can't make fun of my height!