Last night I was with a group of coworkers outside of the infamous Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles in Hollywood, where we had just had an excellent dinner (...of chicken and waffles!). This really overweight, short man was sitting on a bench staring at us as we were walking away and said,
"Where are you guys from? Nebraska?"
We responded that we were from Los Angeles, and walked away extremely puzzled. We were an extremely diverse group and all dressed pretty differently so we couldn't figure out why someone would think we were all from the same place, and such a random place like Nebraska. The best we could come up with was that about 4 out of 20 of us were on the tall side, white, and blonde (a guy about 6'5, me at 6'4, a 5'10 girl and a 5'8 girl). I told them about how I often get asked if I'm from random european countries, and we all realized that is probably what the man was referring to. He saw several tall people and assumed we couldn't be from southern california, and to him Nebraska is probably just as far away as Europe (he looked like one of the local, never-been-out-of-California types).
About Your Contributors
Michelle (so far it's just me)- 6'4" female currently residing in the Los Angeles Area. Second year Law Student, and dating a guy who is 6'7". Only gripe about being tall: the difficulty finding shoes, but it's getting better!
8 comments:
Man, what is it with that!?
My 12th graders gave me the same thing when I was teaching! I went nuts for a week trying to figure out what it really meant when they said I looked like I was from Nebraska! I never did get a reasonable explanation... There must be something we're missing.
I need to meet some people from Nebraska and figure this out!
In Chicago, I get "Are you from Minnesota?" Which has a pretty heavy Norwegian/Swedish population, so it makes some sense.
I don't know about Nebraska, but I'm guessing the assumption has something to do with people thinking that farm kids get tall what with all the fresh air and eggs and stuff. Peasant stock or something like that?
That was our best guess (the farm people) but oddly when I think of farm people I don't think of tall people... *shrug*
Of course, at 6'4" I tend to only acknowledge tallness as over 6ft. :)
In Europe the question is always whether you are from Eastern Europe. I was in Russia a few months ago with my boyfriend. I have never seen to many tall women with shorter men as I did over there. I guess the women are very tall in Russia and they seem to want to get married so badly and so quickly that they don't have time to wait for tall men.
I'm about to move to London for 4 months and will be traveling around Europe a lot so I'm interested to hear what countries people over there think I'm from :)
(Here, I get German, Dutch, etc. a lot)
That is great! I am sure you will love London--it is a wonderful city.
I sure hope so! I'm excited to be near some taller people too. We're not so tall here in the U.S.A. :)
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