My family is always stared at in public. We have both a condition called Marfans running in it (two sisters and a mother), and simply excessive height. My 'baby' sister (now 49), who grew to be 6'8" by a rather young age, was once circled and spoken about, in a grocery store, by two old hags, as if she wasn't there, or wasn't human. Boy, did I let into them, and told them they had the ugliest, cruelest souls I had ever seen. I really went off. Two of my sisters are tall due to Marfans, which also creates a certain pattern of facial features. This genetic disorder brings with it a lifetime of ever-crippling anguish, as the bones and muscles disintegrate, adding canes and wheel chairs, limps and multiple surgeries, as well as other concerns. There are always stares. Having been born in the 1950s, though, when crippled people were actually hidden away from the public, I myself can at least see the huge improvements in this country in the treatment and respect for the disabled, compared to the 1950s. But the staring, always the staring...

My son is simply tall and enormous. He is about 7' tall (he wouldn't measure himself after he hit 6'11", he didn't want to know, too painful). He can't fit into most vehicles. He also has bipolar disorder, and that keeps him from maintaining steady employment. In the USA, if you earn barely enough money to make rent and utilities payments and maybe eat enough to barely stay alive, there is no help given for medicine or doctors, and his medicines alone are $700 a month, and without them, he would die. So he is in an impossible and soul-crushing position. locked into poverty, where he can't afford decent meals or clothing, or anything, ever . Either he can't work enough to get ahead, or he loses his medical care, or else he somehow miraculously jumps up in the employment world and earns enough to be self-sufficient, and that is impossible barring a miracle. His medicines make him crave sweets and fats, and he has battled all his life but most of it has weighed well over 350; the lowest he has been able to do is 302, which is at least 75 lbs too much. People always remembered me, because they never forget my son (who is now 33).

The one thing most annoying is that people will always come up and ask you if you play basketball. My baby sister one day replied, no, I'm a horse jockey. I love that joke. But it really does grind on you, year in and year out.

The world is full of assholes. But it is also full of generous and loving people. I pray you come in contact with some.

On edit: and the same jerks who stare and point, are the first ones to ask you to retrieve something from a top shelf at a store.