i'm a shorty, and all my life, i have been trying to compensate for being a shorty. and being short has made me a very serious, ambitious person.
history is loaded with short people who have done great things. such as napoleon. (he has a complex named after him.) napoleon was a very serious, ambitious man.
he rode around on white horses up mountainsides, conquered countries left and right, got himself thrown in some crazy island jail, and even escaped! he caused revolutions! he fought the russians! and he went from being a sickly little scrawny guy to the Emperor of France! now that's pretty serious stuff.
napoleon proves that being short is a real source of motivation.
some of the coolest people i know are short. like brian foo. he's mad short, like wtfk? but he's like a frickin' renaissance man. i mean, what doesn't brian do? (he doesn't get tall.)
well, i think the problem with being a shorty is that you stare at people's bellies and crotches a lot, and that doesn't give you a very good world perspective. whenever you try to talk to people, you gotta look up at them, at the buggars hanging out of their nostrils, and that's highly unpleasant. i mean, you just see a lot of dirt when you're short.
so sometimes, you try to rise above, by taking yourself very very seriously, since no one else will. if you're a girl, you try to get very skinny, because with proper optical illusion, you might just look kind of tall. in photos.
or you buy really tall shoes, and you trip around in them, thinking you look tall, and you snicker inside, thinking you've fooled them all. but really, if anybody looks down at your feet, which they must do, since they still must look down to see you, they will quickly recognize from your disproportionately long shins and your awkward, stilted walk, that you are really just a funny little shorty. you ain't foolin' anybody.
mad bboys are short. what you gotta prove?
lil kim is sick short, and you know she's compensating for something. but no matter how much mass and matter she adds to other parts of her body, it just don't count for nothing if she can't reach the top shelf in the back of the deli. "hey, sir, can you hand me that condom please? yes that one. no, not the tootsie roll pop. no, a little to your right. yeah. no, that one. yeah i'm over 18. yeah, GIVE IT TO ME, YOU DAMN TROLL!!! yeah okay."
when you're short, you learn quickly to point and give polite instructions to people who are taller, who can get you things. (that's probably another reason napoleon got to command mad troops so quickly, and to have his own complex. it's from a lifetime of practice.)
if they ever were to name a complex after me, it would be the "take myself too damn seriously" complex cuz i take myself too damn seriously. i'm so short, all i'm worried about is getting the right quality of air! not in this damn polluted city; it ain't easy! it ain't easy when your head is closer to the exhaust pipes than other folks. you have to spend all your time making sure your nostrils are well-insulated and you're in the right sector of the atmosphere. now that's a daily grind! i try a whole lot of shit, man, and i get involved in all sorts of crazy plastic activities, but mostly cuz i ain't sure where i'm gonna get my next breath of air. i'm just hopping around, trying to add mass to myself. you know what i mean?
no, that analogy is ridiculous. i also wax poetic cuz i'm short. but really, what i mean to say is that all this jumping jumping is pretty funny, especially if you can conquer France, but i'd be annoyed if i were tall and looking down at me always hopping out of breath. i don't even have good balance or a good sense of myself. i wreck destruction wherever i try to jump: chinatown, guatemala, essential medicines, new york yoga, failed relationships, oh man, the short life pains of a short asian woman. you know, i wear high heels all the frickin' time, and i be tripping like nobody else i know. but really, i ain't foolin' nobody.
and that's what's funny about my life.
Comments (1)
I really liked this post. I've always thought about height as some sort of additional form of classification. Sadly, I can't articulate myself as well as you, but being short forces people to be loud to be heard, seen, noticed, thought of, felt, etc.
It really pulls your inner self out, or at least you are forced to push yourself out there or be left, as you said, "with your face in peoples bellies and crotches." I admired that trait in shorter people and I suppose now that I am short on my campus, I am pulling parts of myself out as well.
I really do look forward to talking to you again. Lets chat on AIM or something one day.