Peter Frick-Wright: From Outside Magazine, this is The Outside Podcast. The first time I ever talked to Paddy O’Connell—on the phone, a few weeks before I returned as the host of this show—we realized that we were both in possession of human bodies of roughly the same size.
I don’t remember how it came up, exactly. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff that day, but it was kind of a big deal. We are two people who don’t often encounter our own kind. We are both very tall, 6’5”, and neither one of us ever gets described as “bird-like” or “sinewy.” My wife says I have the body of a Lego man. And, it’s a very good burn.
Burns aside, those bodies came in handy for both Paddy and I, playing sports in college—basketball, and lacrosse—like, for the college’s team. Sports where height and bulk give you an advantage.
And there’s a thing that happens when you play sports pretty seriously as a kid and move up through the ranks. The thing that happens is that everyone starts to look the same. Or at least they kind of start to all have the same body. All the big guys play football, all the tall guys play basketball, swimmers are thin and long and shave their heads for the big meets, hockey players all have the same accent, and their haircuts are…
