For all of my life i've been bigger than most kids my age, at least a few inches above most

people. When most people think of someone tall and big they think loud, mean, or even scary.
But when it comes to me, i'm quite the opposite. I've always been a big friendly guy, "gentle
giant" most people called me. and i've always been far from loud. Because of this stereotype,
especially among my classmates, I've been told people are scared to talk to me, or meet me.
And this behavior started all the way back in elementary When i first got into school in pre-K. I
got to meet a lot of people my age, something that I haven't really gotten the chance to do
before then. so with meeting new people meant new people were meeting me. and especially
with pre-K children the first thing they notice about you is your appearance, and they don't really
try to hide that fact either. So of course on my first day of pre-k i got a lot of "you're tall"
comments, but the other thing with pre-k kids is that they don't really care about appearances,
so within a few days i made new friends and was, relatively, a normal kid. but when i started
getting older some kids would start to get scared to talk to me, and as a kid that liked being nice
to everyone this really hurt my feelings. knowing people were scared to talk to me made me
more quiet and less interested to meet new people.

This carried on to a few years later going into 6th grade, leaving elementary where i knew every
kid in my grade and maybe even the grade below or above me to a new bigger building with
hundreds of kids i've never seen before was really scary. Now just like first going to school,
middle school is where you meet new people and new people meet you, but this time there's a
bit more judgement. At this point most kids have evened out in height, with some being a little
taller, but I instead just kept my abnormal growth rate and was still this looming tall guy, looking
like I was a grade or two above everyone. and this is what most people thought, along with the
old "you’re tall" comments i started getting the "did you get held back?" comments when
meeting new people. This made me feel offended since I was and still am in advanced classes
and consider learning rather easy. These comments didn't affect me much but they still
offended me when someone asked. comments like that and people being scared of someone
who looked older than them in their grade continued on for most of my middle school life.

By the time the end of 7th grade rolled around I reached a height of 6'3 and have since stopped
seeing little to no growth to this point of me being in 10th grade. by 8th grade a lot more of my
classmates have since grown to my height, making comments like the before mentioned less
common. The stigma of simply being big and tall was still there though, and I feel like it always
will be. But as i grow older i find it less important, and have grown comfortable in my abnormal
height. But I still look back on middle school, where I was insecure about my height and
hunched down. or when in elementary when i learned people were scared of me and made me
be more quiet since i didn't want to scare people. i think mostly the elementary problem affected
me most, since i am still quiet when talking to new people. but at least i've changed where i'm
probably the loudest person when it comes to my friends.