my parents are short,  my mom was about 5′4,  my dad about 5′6 or so.   both sides of my family have short women in them, i had two grandfathers who were sort of tall but i just lost out on their height, my brother and sister took it before i got to it. 

i think i was the same height as everyone else when i was in the first or second grade then i stopped growing.. i am 4′11 and that’s pushing it.   i worked at a daycare and several of the 7 year olds were almost as tall as me.  some people think its cute to be this short, and on some pixie type woman it might be, but not on me.

now don’t get me wrong, i am very happy that, even though very short, i reach the ground and i can walk and run and get around as good as any taller person.  there are so many people out there who would be very happy to have my short legs and for that i am thankful, but as a human, we on the whole are complainers, so i am going to complain.

first of all, we short people don’t appreciate most of the jokes,  after the first two or three it gets old.  we short people hate to ask for help to get items off shelves and i will walk away and not buy something if it is out of reach.  we short people hate to be rubbed on the head or told we are cute and that we look like little kids. 

now i normally have a good sense of humor so i can deal with jokes about my height and will even make some of my own,  … but sometimes it just gets old.   is being short a handicap,  yes sometimes it can be.  the world is built for the ‘average’ person, so if you are under the ‘average’ height, you are out of luck.  i guess there has to be an average and if you are one of the lucky few who fall into the average range, you are pretty lucky. 

the average height for an american woman is 5′4.6 inches and for a man it is 5″10.2 inches.  of course this varies in every country and with your cultural backgrounds.  my children have all been lucky enough to be average or above so they have not had too much problems with the ’shortness’ that i have dealt with my whole life. 

yet again i am thankful for my legs, no matter how short, but it sure would have been nice to have a few extra inches.