I’m short, maybe 5’3” when standing up straight. I used to be 5’4½” (half inches count when you are short of stature), but time and gravity have lowered my profile. I’ve heard a lot of short jokes in my life. Perhaps you recognize them.
• I just played miniature golf with a short person. He just called it golf.
• Is it harder for a short person to reach his goals?
• I love short people. They’re more down to earth.
This is where we cue the music for Randy Newman’s classic 1977 song about short people having no reason to live. It turns out we have innumerable reasons to live.
I went through puberty just fine with more hair in various places, pimples, a voice change, etc. In the height department I grew a little – then stopped. Stopped short, one may say. My male friends kept growing on their paths to vertical supremacy, leaving me pretty much looking … up. The people who had been “my people” no longer were. As ninth grade approached, I was feeling adrift.
Starting high school can be tough enough with hundreds of people running in various directions, cafeteria politics and meeting new people. My buddies, who now towered over me and weighed 50 pounds more, were trying out for football and basketball. I was not destined for either, of course. At 5’3” and 115 pounds, I was not exactly middle linebacker material. Girls, who I liked from kindergarten on, liked the jocks. Many of the girls were also taller than I was, making slow dancing interesting with my nose resting in the occasional blossoming bosom. OK, being short wasn’t all bad.
Don’t feel sorry for me, the little guy. God has a way of using times like this to build our character and redirect our lives. I learned to play the ukulele in eighth grade, graduating to the guitar by my freshman year. I had already been in choir and the (nerdy) boys’ glee club in middle school. My voice was decent. I was about to get on the launch pad of my postpubescent years.
No football. No basketball. How about the stage? You probably didn’t see that coming, did you? An upperclassman told me to try out for the chorus in the school production of “My Fair Lady.” You didn’t have to be particularly talented in terms of voice or acting to make the chorus. You just needed to show up for rehearsals. I met tons of new people from freshman to seniors. Everyone liked to sing, dance and act. I found my people! By the end of my senior year, I had been in a bunch of musicals with lead roles in a few.
Music became my ticket to much more.
Q: You know what girls like almost as much as the starting quarterback?
A: A guy who can play the guitar and sings to them.
My height and size kind of melted away when I sang to young ladies. Yes, I may have even melted a heart or two. I won’t go too far into that since my wife will be reading this article. Even though it happened 50 years ago, it’s just best not to go there.
I was extremely active in the youth program at my church. This was another place I found “my people.” I was in the choir, received voice lessons from the minister of music and even got sent to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, for a summer music camp. Our church youth group did Christian musicals and I learned something that has stayed with me my whole life: stage presence. You know how some people put public speaking right up there with the fear of dying? Not me. I have always been comfortable in front of a crowd. This helped me dramatically in my business career. You caught that, right? Dramatically.
So what else can a diminutive young man do? Well, I became a decent snow skier (I grew up in Michigan.), water skier, tennis player, racquetball player and few other endeavors where size really didn’t matter. Don’t forget the guitar a couple paragraphs back.
It turns out my early thespian years were a springboard for my eventual career in hospitality. Could it be that I not only loved the audience, but I needed the audience to love me? Restaurants and coffeehouses became my new stage. Now the OTMJ gives me the occasional voice to give one more audience, the readership, a chance to see me perform.
I’ve rarely given much thought over the years to my having received the short end of the stick in the height department. It simply pushed me in other directions. No doubt some of you have your own stories of challenges that pushed you in your own direction.
As 2023 comes to a close, I am most grateful for the life God has given me to live. I hope you can say the same. OK, one more: Don’t ever lend money to Randy. When it comes time for him to pay you back, he’ll always be short. (cue the drum roll)
