On the Bright Side, at Least I’m Taller than Danny DeVito
But I Remember What My Great-Grandmother Looked Like
I’m 6 feet tall...rounded up to the nearest foot, which is all you really need to know. Okay, confession time--I’m 5 feet 6 inches. Okay, I’m like 5 feet 5.5 inches, but that's besides the point. Sometimes you just shrink! For a woman, I'm right in the middle of the pack; statistically, I am no outlier. I'm ordinary. I’m typical. I am generic. I am humdrum. I am of medium, and last and most damningly I am average.

In other words, I am bitter.

I want to be better than average.

I will find a way.

Now I do yoga in the hopes that I may increase my height half an inch by increasing the spaces between my back vertebrae via a series of painful stretches. Hanging from a bar might help, too, although I’ve never seen a bar outside of a playground. Maybe I could go to space so my spine stretches out.

Space would be cool.

My mother is 5’10”, and my father is 6’. My "little" sister, who is about a year and a half younger, is 5’8”, and my “very little” brother is 6’1.” Some of my younger cousins are at least a foot taller than me. I talk to their belly buttons. They don’t recognize my face because they've only seen the top of my head, which they would occasionally pat.

I would like to address the short genes I somehow inherited--you, genes, are going to hell because I am never having children just to spite you and also because I have many other genetic faults that I don’t want to discuss, including and beyond eyebrow hairiness and hardcore acne well into my 30s, for example.

When your younger siblings and shrunken-from-age older relatives are all taller than you, it doesn’t matter how tall you are--you’re forever the runt of the litter, and I, the first-born, am that runt. If only my family members were below 5 feet, I would not be nearly so bitter. Then I would bask in my tallness, laughing at them gleefully (and perhaps evilly) as I readjust the car mirrors and seat position to accommodate me and to coincidentally spite them.

I could drink thousand calorie milkshakes every day without becoming fat because my tall, lean body needs the calories, at least until my metabolism dies and I gain weight at an astonishing rate and then ironically end up obese. I would tower above the other girls on my basketball team in an intimidating and awkward way. Stairs should be hypothetically easier to go up because the ratio of leg length to stair height would be greater. In the office place, I might look like a boss in my super long-legged pantsuit, and I would intimidate my lowly office peers. Maybe I could even be a supermodel…

Hmmm…

Hmmm…

No.

****.*

I might even suffer from “tall people problems,” but I wouldn’t mind. I would still be tall! For example, people might annoyingly ask me, “How’s the weather up there?” to which I would respond, “Okay. A bit cloudy.” If I were running from the police, they could see me in a crowd. I might have trouble putting my long-legged pants on. Perhaps I would be decapitated by a ceiling fan. However, I wouldn’t mind any of these problems because they all come with being tall, which is the most important physical characteristic to have--even more important than a pulse.

It sucks to be short. My pant legs drag on the ground, although what can I do? I refuse to shop in the petite section, and I am too fat for the juniors section. I also have trouble scraping off the ice covering the middle of my car windshield. It takes quite a lunge. Also, I have to literally jump to reach things on the top shelf of the grocery store and shove the product closer and closer to me with each jump. Sometimes I think about stepping on the lowest shelf to reach the top shelf, but in the end I decide it’s a bad idea. People looking at me have pity in their eyes, like “she should really just ask someone for help.” However, I will not ask for help. I am an independent person who should really buy a stepstool.

Because I am “miniature.”

And why do I deserve to be taller than many people? I don’t know. Do I feel a weird sense of entitlement like most Americans? (YES!) Why not dwell on the fact that I am really, really tall compared to Danny DeVito, although I am not famous nor talented? (Although I must admit, everyone is taller than Danny DeVito.) Positively, I’m compact and economy size, like a fun-size candy bar. After all, fun size is not the gluttonous large size that leaves you feeling guilty and yet is more than the bite size and is unfulfilling. I’m even saving the environment by using less gas when I drive due to my lesser weight. I have a close relationship with the ground that few share, especially when I fall because I’m clumsy. While I fall more than most people because I’m clumsy, I fall a shorter distance, and I can get up from a stool without my height changing. Theoretically, I should be able to do a backflip. I can even almost touch my toes (in the past). I am simply closer to mother Earth, physically, than most people and also physically closer to the children (until the age of 10). When I am sad I can curl up into a tiny little ball instead of a big ball. Happily, my cat has yet to reach knee height, the midget.

Just wait, all you tall people. Someday you’ll run into a low doorframe or hanging chandelier, and guess who’ll be laughing then? Probably no one because that can be painful and cause significant damage to one’s head and everyone would just be concerned..but you get my drift.

* For the sake of my grandparents, **** is pronounced, “Asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk.”