The tape measure at CVS didn’t start at zero.
I noticed it when the person measuring him announced a number that was clearly too high. He looked at me with the kind of satisfaction that doesn’t invite scrutiny, so I let it sit for a minute. But the tape was mounted too high on the wall, and the math was off, and eventually I had to say something.
We agreed to wait for an official measurement.
This was February of last year, ahead of a basketball physical. He was close. We both knew he was close. But close wasn’t the same as over, and the CVS number didn’t count.
A few weeks later, at CHOP for a follow-up, the nurse measured him the right way. He looked at me while she did the math. When she read the number back, he was under six feet. Just under, but under. He gave me a face. Not devastated, just pouty. The face of someone who had been robbed of something they were owed.
“I’m sorry, pal,” I said.
We kept tracking it. Every appointment, every person who checked us in got some version of the story whether they wanted it or not. The fractions kept moving. 5’11” became 5’11” and a half, and then more. Every measurement got reported back to me with the same energy a stock trader uses when the market moves in their direction.
Then, at an allergy appointment, the person checking us in measured him on the way in. She did the math. She read the number back.
Over six feet.
He looked at me. “Yeeeeessss, finally!”
She got the short version of the story whether she wanted it or not.
Later, when the allergy nurse came in — she knew us, knew we’d been tracking this — she asked how he was doing. He didn’t mention allergies.
“I’m finally taller than my dad,” he said. “I’m the tallest one in the family.”
I was genuinely happy for him. I was also aware that I would be hearing about this for the rest of my life.
I was right.
The Stanley Cup came first. His Avalanche beat my Lightning in 2022, 7-0, in a game we went to together. He brings it up with the consistency of someone running a scheduled maintenance check. It never gets old for him. It will never get old for him.
Then the height. Then the Fortnite digs. And then a few weeks ago, a new one arrived. He started calling me “my old man.” Probably picked it up from a video or a show, tried it out, saw me laugh, and filed it away as a working bit. Now it comes out regularly, deployed with the confidence of someone who has found a reliable tool and intends to use it.
He does this. He latches onto things that land and keeps going back to them, past the point where most people would move on. I recognize it. I was the same way as a kid, running a joke into the ground because I’d found something that worked and didn’t want to let it go. For me, eventually, necessity taught me to improvise. To read the room and shift. For him, finding something that works and holding onto it might be doing different work. Generating new material on the fly is its own kind of skill, and it doesn’t come easily for everyone.
So he keeps the inventory. The Stanley Cup. The height. The old man. The Fortnite digs.
My response, when he runs through the list, is always the same.
“You’re taller, better looking, and younger. I get it.”
He considers this.
“And better at Fortnite,” he adds.
He’s not wrong about most of it. And he knows I know that. That’s the part he likes best. Not just winning, but winning with my acknowledgment. The scoreboard only counts if the other person can see it.
I can see it.
He’s the tallest one in the family. He’ll remind me if I forget.
I don’t mind. He’s earned every inch of it.