On Being Short

I am 5’3, which is generally considered short. When lining up in order of height for school pictures, I am always at the back of the line or close to it. The majority of my classmates (and plenty of people younger than I) tower over me. I cannot touch the tops of doorframes and more often than not I cannot reach the top bookshelf. If I decided to play basketball I would be laughed at. I’ve experienced plenty of the cons of being short. Whenever I went to a restaurant with my family, I was asked by a well-meaning server “would you like a kids’ menu, sweetie?” until roughly the age of sixteen. I was once carded for a PG-13 rated movie in the middle of my junior year. I have endured the dissapointment and embarassment of not being able to ride the big rollercoaster because I was a few inches shy of the height limit. I have had to stand on my tiptoes to properly see over the customer service counter. I have had to wriggle to the front of crowds in order to see the parade, concert, fight, etc. On a few occasions I have finally found a pair of jeans that were the right length for a person of my size only to discover at the check-out counter that they were actually capris. Taller friends have held objects high above my head in order to amuse themselves with the spectacle of my trying to grab it. In fifth grade I had to switch to a bottom locker because I could not reach the combination lock on my much-more-desirable top locker. For years and years I cursed my height and desperately wished that I could be taller. I felt as though an extra few inches would magically make succesful, respected, more attractive, and more likely to be taken seriously. Somewhere down the road, I realized that this was all wrong. Shakira, who is pletnty attractive and very succesful is only 5’0. Tom Cruise is only 5’6 and yet he is a world famous, much-swooned-over actor. Furthermore, taller people have so many worries and that I, a near midget, will never need to concern myself with. I will never have to worry about walking into doorframes, hitting my head on ceilings, being too tall for a bed or couch, or feeling in need of more leg room on airplanes. I also discovered that potential dates do not enjoy the emasculating feeling of being shorter than their female counterpart. Therefore, as a short, heterosexual female, this will never be a problem for me. The manifesto of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” religion (also known an “pastafarianism”) even suggests that shorter people have greater spiritual power because the “noodly apendages” of the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster are exerting greater force upon them. Also, smaller people consume fewer resources such as oxygen, food, water, and fabric for clothing. We also create less waste by consuming less. Our diminutive stature gives us the ability to hide more effectively from potential predators and our more stable, lower center of gravity makes us better fighters. If we humans were nearer to the bottom of the food chain, natural selection would most certainly favor short people. So fellow shorties, embrace your height. We are the prime examples of how less truly is more. (559)