Sandy would always have two options: a life lived publicly — one that embraced her title, perhaps attempted to do good with it, but invited judgment — or a private one. Soon after she became aware of how short her life might be, she elected the former. A Scottish promoter named Norman Adie first took Sandy to Australia, where she appeared at several department stores. That summer she did appearances at Adie’s Fantastic Facts and Feats in Wildwood, N.J. Sandy brought along Michael and adopted a dog she called Adie. After two summers there, she decided to take a job at the Guinness Museum in Niagara Falls, Canada.

"At that point her family needed money, and she wasn't making it too well on a secretary salary," Rose says. "She could be out on her own and make it for herself. That appealed to her."

The 1981 Canadian documentary Being Different shows how Sandy spent her eight years at the museum. She is announced and comes out from behind a curtain. She wears blue eye shadow and pink slacks. Seated, she is still tall. She holds a Superscope microphone into which she begins her very rehearsed-sounding spiel: “Good afternoon, all you short people. How you doing today? My name is Sandy Allen and I’m the tallest living woman in the world.” It’s peppered with tame jokes, many of which she’d repeat throughout her life, in interview after interview. She asks short guys to “eat their hearts out.” She recites her 450-pound weight, “give or take an ounce.” She then opens it up for questions. “Don’t hesitate,” she commands after a pause. “I’ve been asked everything from ‘How is your sex life?’ to ‘How big is your toothbrush?’” The room chortles. One woman asks if she has kids. She replies she doesn’t; Michael is the boy who’s entered alongside her. A man asks whether she eats more than average. “Well, for breakfast this morning I only had three short people, so that’s not too much,” she answers, a little too breezily.

“Her shoe size is 22,” the male narrator says as footage rolls of Sandy’s petite grandmother helping her into a jacket. “All her clothes must be custom-made.” The narrator adds that she’s made a choice to be “on exhibition.”

“Well, my height is there, why not take advantage of it?” Sandy asks. “I’m proud of my size. I’m not running away from it. I’m doing this in order to show people that I can handle the problems that were presented to me by my size; now, why can’t you handle yours?” And in some respects, it seems this was a proud time for her. She made a decent living, had her own apartment, met a lot of people, doing something relatively easy. The curtain. The spiel. Repetitive questions. Invasive questions. Insulting questions. Stooping for photos. Children with sticky hands. Indifference. Laughter. A dozen or shows a day, eight hours a day, five days a week, for eight years. But the tourists who came — did they really come to have their hearts and minds changed? (Are my motives for investigating Sandy any more pure?)

"Basically it was a freak show," Rose says.

During her years with Guinness, Sandy traveled to Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Japan twice, and Thailand, where she visited an alligator farm and was kissed by an orangutan. During her second Japan trip, the media found it funny to sew her an extra-large bridal gown and stage a fake wedding between her and her choice of the world’s two largest living men. Though it was just for show — both men were married — they spared no expense. They kept the dress but would send it if she ever requested. She never did. By many accounts she never had a serious relationship. By many accounts she would have been an incredible mom.

Sandy eventually could take it no more, and returned to Indiana. She became a secretary in the office of Indianapolis’ Mayor William Hudnut, a job she enjoyed. They outfitted her with an extra-large desk, an extra-large chair. She could type 90 words per minute despite her fingers. Once the Indianapolis Indians visited and had more fun talking with her than they did with the mayor. (She was a big fan of them, and also of the Pacers, who helped her buy shoes.) After, she worked briefly at a sewage treatment plant. By this point her health and mobility were declining and she elected to go on government medical aid. The poverty she’d known as a child would stalk her until her end.

A man named John Kleiman, who’d formerly managed fellow Indianan Bobby Helms, most famous for his rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock,” approached Sandy at a parade and asked to be her manager, to which she agreed. In the late '70s and '80s, she'd had scattered talk show appearances, including Oprah.

With his help, she appeared on more shows, including Jerry Springer, whose host dropped his usual sensational antics while she and other Guinness holders appeared. She appeared on Vicki Lawrence alongside the man who could smoke the most cigarettes at once. She was on Montel alongside the world's shortest twins and a man with a bone in his nose. She did Leeza Gibbons alongside the man with the world’s longest mustache, the man with the world’s best memory, the woman who had lost the most weight, the woman who was the most flexible, and an escape artist, who escaped on the show from a washing machine. In the mid-'90s, she twice did Howard Stern.

“I have dwarfism of the genitalia,” Howard says, and asks whether her genitalia are normal or proportional.

“I believe everything is proportional,” Sandy replies, playing along. He gets her to say she can’t use regular-sized Tampax and that she’s still a virgin. “My moral standards are, I guess by today’s standards, a little old-fashioned,” she admits.

“You ever get horny for a man?” he asks.

“Of course I’d like male companionship,” Sandy answers with thought. When a caller who’s 6'3" calls in and asks her to have tall children with him, Sandy says she gets asked out all the time by less-than-desirable-seeming gentlemen. Howard’s parting advice to her is that she buy a Hitachi Magic Wand.

While Sandy felt Maury Povich was nice, the talk show host who was her favorite was Sally Jessy Raphael. The first show she did for her, “Don’t Stare, I’m Still Human,” featured a woman who had a severe skin disease, a baby who had a mole that covered a third of her body, a baby with a disease that made her pee smell like maple syrup, a man who ate uncontrollably, and a girl who had a disease that affected her muscles and her bones. Sandy enjoyed that such programs encouraged people to understand and sympathize with those who suffered from strange and unusual diseases — and the humiliation, the isolation, the pain therein. When Raphael more or less repeated the program with a different slate of guests, she let Sandy co-host, a first.

She did these appearances, and spoke at Tall Clubs — an organization for men taller than 6'4" and women taller than 5'10" — churches, and elementary schools. She did it not for the money (she couldn't make too much and lose her disability): She did it to spread the tolerance of difference.