Diminution

"When you're small, you spend your life crawling..."

--Morrissey--

Among the genetically-derived physical attributes for which folks are discriminated against, if I asked you to list the ones that most profoundly affected a person's life, you'd likely mention race or sex; maybe you'd try to throw sexual "preference" in there. Being short wouldn't even register on the radar.

But I'm a 5'6" male, and I can tell you I've been reminded of that fact all of my adult life, and anything I've achieved has been in spite of it. Whereas a taller person cuts an imposing figure and demands respect with much less effort, we more diminutive folk struggle not to be dismissed in nearly every possible way for a factor we can't control and that is ultimately of no relevance to anything other than being able to slam dunk a basketball with ease.

I'm certainly no self-hater--many who know me have described me as "confident-bordering-on-arrogant" (which, I'm sure, does me no favors--I should probably be more reticent and shamed by my shortness), and I personally see nothing wrong with my height and, in fact, would never want to be taller than I am. (Though I did take offense to the "life-sized" model of Alvin they had at the movie theatre last year to promote Alvin and The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. It was only three inches shorter than me. I have to call bullshit on the notion that I'm only three inches taller than a chipmunk.)

Yet, this has been a hard-fought war. For example, just last week I caught a co-worker muttering under his breath that the employee who works under me shouldn't bother to listen to what a little short guy tells her to do. In the past, people who probably considered themselves my friends have made light of my height, and at key and rather public moments (crowded bars, weddings, high school reunions) at length in unflattering ways, joking that my height was the reason why I relate well to small children, that I would need platform shoes or a stepping stool to do this or a booster seat to do that, or noting that I was a "funny little guy" (as a response to my cutting up with them good-naturedly).

Before I met my wife, who thankfully is a person of substance who treats this as the non-issue that it is, this no doubt affected my dating prospects. One girlfriend who professed to love me told me no matter what I did (exercised, worked out, etc.), I'd never be as much of a man as a taller guy, and that she felt more safe when she dated taller men than she did with me. In another instance when I was once set up on a blind date, my date spent the night being rude and unresponsive. Initially I didn't take it personally, because I figured mine was hardly the first blind date where the chemistry failed. I was deeply hurt and offended when it was later passed on to me that the date had disdainfully told her friend (who had dragged me out to meet her in the first place) that she was tempted to rub chalk on me while we were playing pool, so I'd look like the smurf I was as short as.

(If I hadn't gotten the memo before, in 2001 the message was driven home further. Being the lifelong comics geek that I am, it was impossible not to notice the instant transformation of that stud of the Marvel Universe Logan, aka Wolverine. Historically Logan was depicted as 5'2" and quite stocky, but in the wake of the success of Brian Singer's X-Men, and Hugh Jackman's sex symbol-creating performance of the character, Marvel thereafter portrayed Wolverine as the standard 6'1". It was stark and immediate; one month other characters towered over him, as they always had, and the next, he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Captain America and the like. His incredible tenacity, indomitable personality, and prodigious abilities, though they are the very things that always defined the character, were simply not enough to make him seem sexy and to allow him to be taken seriously as a hero to the public-at-large. Message sent; message received. A pretty important beat for the character, that he would be underestimated by people who didn't know him, and would always prove to be more than met the eye, was tossed to make him more generic and "photogenic," and all the guys who can't and couldn't make it to 6'0" saw one of the few diminutive models of masculinity in pop culture snatched away for homogeneity's sake.)

It always strikes me as odd that it would be deemed socially unacceptable to make disparaging remarks about race if I were black or about my sex if I were a woman, but that bagging on someone for falling below the height average is perfectly ok. In each instance, I try to handle it with all the grace I can muster, but just what the proper response should be is hard to gage. (The instinctive response is to savagely wail on whomever has disrespected you, but that's nowhere near as constructive as it is cathartic.) Should you laugh along at your own body? ("Hahaha, I know, I'm short, it's funny, right?") Get confrontational and call them out? ("F-you you f-ing -f-er!") Ignore it? ("I'm sorry, did you say something?") Stoop to their level and identify some physical attribute they are likely to be sensitive about? ("Well, you have a stupid nose/tooth/ear.") (Others: "I apologize for my height; I'll get on some human growth hormone right away so I'm more acceptable and pleasing to you.") None of these really ring true. You have been placed in a situation where any reaction to or acknowledgement of the comment diminishes you. But ultimately the fact is, anyone who would dismiss you based on such a superficial attribute is probably not someone who has much to offer you, and so you should limit your contact with them if you can.

In the meanwhile, I have gained a lot from my shortness. Possibly in some effort to compensate and prove wrong the naysayers, I'm always trying to improve myself physically, be it with weights, running, or the speed bag, and even though I go through my ebbs and flows with exercise, the will to be better and the chip on my shoulder generally keeps me healthier and stronger than I would be otherwise. It's also taught me, as much as I can, to patiently tolerate bad behavior because it's not bad people, but rather simply human nature to look for reasons to exclude and dismiss others (as a method toward simplification), and as Confucius teaches, I should observe these tendencies in others (and their effects) so I can try to curb them in my own behavior. And so far as the group I'm in, I'm always looking at things from the outside, even if I'm really on the inside. I've come to identify with the underdog and the outsider in almost every situation, and even though it slows down my reaction time on some issues, it keeps me from doing anything too fucked up to anyone else, without solid reason. I'm not black, or a woman, or gay, or really any of the standard minorities you can instantly drum up, but I can pretty easily empathize with how they have been and are marginalized, dismissed, derided, and excluded.

Yeah, I've read all of the crap about how you're less likely to get raises, or be respected and admired, or be considered sexy, and all of the other stuff that men of average or greater height take for granted and I can honestly say that I don't feel slighted in the least. I have taken, and likely will continue to take a lot of guff for being short. But whether it's true or not, I tend to see myself as a scrapper, as someone who in reality can go toe-to-toe with anyone and who is perpetually challenging himself to grow more (ok, metaphorically, you jackass), and I also tend, because they are generally skewed by projections and divorced from reality, to mistrust other's perceptions of me. The confidence and sense of well being I feel about the whole issue are rock solid because they are hard-won and time-tested. At 5'6", I have a loving and fulfilling marriage to a beautiful and brilliant wife, a daughter whom I adore, a lovely home, and a career that's solid and that both challenges me and affords me a measure of security. I have creative outlets (writing, music). It's a good life. So it seems in truth, height's only an issue if you allow it to be.

Having said all that, if I ever run into Randy Newman on the street, I'll knock his goddamned teeth down his throat.