Dad’s gift to his children was greatness. What will their children have for him?
Tall Tatura titan Jim Gow will celebrate another Father’s Day with his fast-growing teenagers this weekend, but will it be the last he looks down on them?
The tall father is almost two meters tall.
For those of you playing at home with your old-fashioned bingo cards and don’t have a conversion calculator handy, that’s 6 feet.
His son Hamish is only five inches – about 13 cm – shorter.
You might think that’s still quite a distance behind, but Hamish is only 13. Jim had his biggest growth spurt when he was five years older than his son is today.
“I was 5’10” until I was 18 and grew 6″ in 12 months and had to get a whole new wardrobe,” said Jim.
“I was a late bloomer. Hamish will be bigger; it’s just a matter of time.”
Jim’s daughter Bella is also on her way to great heights at the age of 15: she measures 170 cm.
While being tall has its advantages (like being able to reach things on upper shelves or change lightbulbs without using a stepladder), being tall isn’t as great as it (far-fetched) seems.
Jim said Australian professional basketball coach and former player Luc Longley, who is 7ft 1in (215cm), described it best when he compared life at high altitude to living in a doll’s house.
“Shower height – even mirror height, driving; beds are good,” said Jim.
“People can shorten their trousers, but they can’t move on.”
He said other natural enemies of tall people include low-hanging branches and doorframes.
Although Jim said it can sometimes be difficult to relate to people who are intimidated by his size, Bella knows her father is a gentle giant.
“Dad’s size doesn’t make him scary or better than anyone else. It just means he’s more likely to be hugged and grabbed chips from the cupboard,” she said.
“Dad gives us much more than just our size, but size is a bonus.”
Hamish said he was grateful to have inherited his father’s tall stature because it helped him play basketball.
Jim and his wife Kate, along with their teenagers who are already towering over their mother, will spend Father’s Day this weekend visiting their own fathers in Tatura and the Bendigo area.
The busy dad said his ideal Father’s Day would involve stopping and relaxing to watch TV or motorsports, but before he could tackle the seemingly unattainable art of doing nothing, he had to get his to-do list done on Sunday.
If he were smaller, maybe his list would be too.
But perhaps this theory goes beyond Jim’s height.
The news wishes fathers a happy Father’s Day on Sunday.
