Being Short

I was short. Comically so, in a family where height was practically hereditary virtue.

My mother measured 175 centimeters, my uncle 188, and my grandfather 190—empirical evidence that height was hereditary, just selectively enforced.

And then there was me—the oddity, orbiting below everyone else. I was short, perpetually so, (until a miraculous growth spurt in the summer between ninth and tenth grade that eventually catapulted me to 180 centimeters and ended a lifelong worry). The popular kids were tall. The mainstream imagination holds that height equals charisma, the convenient delusion that flatters the vertically gifted and quietly emasculates the others.

My height also exhausted myself and my family. Every summer we awaited the promised “growth spurt.” This summer became next summer, and then the next. Maybe hope, not gravity, was the real downward force that pressed me down into the disappointment we’d reserve for next year.

When you spend years looking up, you learn to notice the faces others overlook.