Finding a reason for freakishly long arms

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Finding a reason for freakishly long arms
June 9, 2008 - 6:43PM
David Trinko
My arms are freakishly long.
I can touch my knees without bending over. Long-sleeve shirts never fit right. I can't hold my wife's hand without bending my elbow.
Generally accepted knowledge says your wingspan - that distance from the tip of one middle finger to the tip of that same finger on the other outstretched arm - is roughly the same as your height.
My wingspan is 72 inches, or 6 feet. My height is 69 inches, or 5 feet 9 inches. I could never understand where those extra three inches came from.
A girl at school used to call me "Daddy Longlegs" because my arms and legs were so long and unwieldy.
Most of my woes come with clothes. At 5-9, I'm the average height of a man in the United States. Needing a 37-inch arm, however, makes finding clothes very difficult. Even when I do find them, my arms are long, not my torso. Countless shirts have pockets resting on my gut.
In high school, my older brother and I could generally wear the same long-sleeved shirts. That's awkward, since he's nearly 6 inches taller than I am.
I have a closet full of gifts from well-meaning girlfriends and family who tried to get large shirts, knowing they'd be big enough around the waist but not realizing they'd be several inches too short in the arms.
And girlfriends could be troublesome. When your arms are several inches longer than someone you're dating, it's hard to hold a hand in a movie or while you're walking.
I'm self-conscious enough about my freakishly long arms that I bend my elbows when I walk, so people can't see them dangle. When I once told a co-worker at a past job I could touch my knees without bending over, the whole office spent a week gawking at my arms as I walked by.
I could never understand why my arms were so freakishly long. It always seemed to be such a bother.
Now I think I've figured out why.
I'm rolling toward my third Father's Day as an honoree instead an adoring kid. And maybe those freakishly long arms were there for a reason all along.
While my arms are too long to hold hands with my wife without bending the elbow, they're the perfect length for taking our 6-year-old daughter for a walk through a crowded room.
They're also ideal for pulling a Crock-Pot out of the cupboard above the refrigerator when my wife requests my "monkey arms."
I can pull our baby daughter in and out of her crib without ever pushing down the crib's railing. And those same freakishly long arms can lift her near the ceiling, enjoying her giggles of delight throughout the arch upward.
Yes, my arms are freakishly long. It took a long time to figure out why. Now that I know, I wouldn't have them any other way.