Family Memory (XXXIX): Growing Six Inches in Six Weeks

Back when I was 14, I wasn’t very tall. I was probably about 5’6 or so. Around Christmas of 8th grade, I wound up gaining ‘quite a bit’ of weight–Mom joked that I was getting pudgy, so that meant for Christmas, I got several pairs of pants with a much wider waistband. Whee–nothing like pants for Christmas.

So school was getting ready to start again and I wasn’t feeling great day after day. I was sore/had a lot of joint pain, my back hurt, things like that. Of course, being 14, my mom assumed this was a litany of excuses for me to avoid doing the (few) chores she wanted me to do around the house. It’s a fair cop–every teen does that past and present, future, too. Thus, she was skeptical of any/everything.

One morning, I got dressed, came down stairs wearing brand new pants. I was sleepy and just wanted to eat breakfast and go back to bed (but I knew I couldn’t do that). I got to the kitchen doorway and Mom looked at me, gave me one of those LOOKS and said “Why are you wearing those pants? Why aren’t you wearing the ones you got for Christmas?”

“I am,” I answered–because I was.

She didn’t believe me. She got up, walked over to me, grabbed me and the back of the pants to check the label. They WERE the pants she got. The problem was that they didn’t fit. In fact, the bottom of the pants didn’t even make it to my ankle bone–whereas at Christmas, the cuffs had rested on my feet/just above the heel. She didn’t understand.

Then she looked at me, gave me a weird look, then looked to see if I was standing on tiptoes. Nope. “You’ve grown.”

Indeed I had–between Christmas and the return to school, I’d grown 3 inches. She measured me in the doorway–I was 5’9! So she returned the 3-4 sets of pants, got replacement ones three inches longer…with the same waist. NOW I could have good-fitting pants.

Uh huh.

We move to the start of February at which point, we repeat January’s conversation–except Mom thought I’d put on one of the Christmas sets of pants and that she’d missed returning them. Nope. I’d grown again–three more inches, making me 6′. And with it, all that pudginess I’d picked up over the preceding months, it was all gone. I was the same weight in February I’d been before Christmas, but puberty had done its thing.

I wound up eventually growing another 3.5″ but that growth wasn’t in such a quick spurt.

On my knees, shoulders, and back, I have scars–stretch lines–that show the growth (like tree rings) and how fast it happened. I don’t remember my voice dropping, the need to start shaving in any way, the appearance of body hair–none of that, but man-oh-man, I remember that brief six weeks where I was so miserable as my body shot up.

The other thing that I think about now–6″ of growth is a ton in that short a period. I went from shorter than my mom to being significantly taller than her…but neither of us really noticed it as it happened. No one at school noticed me getting taller either. I think that’s because of seeing each other daily, being around those other people all the time. Our brains don’t register the massive change happening because it is slow/continuous rather than instantaneous. Maybe that’s why so many ignore climate change and other issues–they don’t see it in their daily life, so they never think to look over the long term.

Anyways, wild to think about remembering all this after 40+ years.