Success is the best revenge

s hort. I walk into a room and the subtext is short. Women pat me on the head. Men think they can mess with me and they do. Not because they are good or smart, but because they are taller.
My boss  regularly, openly  ridicules  me for being short. Makes fun of the fact that I am short. It's apparently okay to make fun of short people. It's the forgiven prejudice. Fat, black, female,not okay to make fun of.They have laws against that. Short guy/ WTF!.. Shut  up shortie... know your place and stay there. And if you do stand up and assert yourself, you have issues. Only tall men are allowed to be aggressive. Aggressive short men have a Napoleon complex (he was tall for his time). Successful short men have issues. Like successful women. Only it's okay for them to mess with short men too. Because women (surprise,surprise) can be a lot like men. Cruel, cowardly and herdlike. They like messing with small men, because small men are supposedly lower on the status ladder than them.
They can take their resentments against tall men out on short men.Because like tall men, they believe that short men deserve it.
Short men are the third sex.

Call me bitter if you like. I am. Not because I am a failure, I am a success in every measure. I went into the army at the age of 17 and they wanted to send me home because I was short. I went to get my uniform and the women handing them out asked if my mother knew I was there.

I was the youngest man to graduate from my military academy. Ever. I went through a training program that started with a group of  155 men. 55 graduated. One died. Two never walked again. I finished in fine form and went to university where women laughed at me. Openly. I would go to bars at night and if I tried to talk with a woman, the common response was, "Does your mother know you're here?"
I built up all sorts of defence mechanisms. Like a stinging wit.
So, when a woman said, 'Does your.. mother...". I'd stop them with the retort, " Does your father know you exist." Cruel isn't it?
But that's what we have to do to maintain a shred of self-respect.

I married my wife  who wore a special dress at our wedding that wouldn't make me look short. God bless her mother for having the sensitivity to figure that one out.


I started my chosen career and within 7 years I rose to the top position. My work won international recognition. I left my country of birth and came to the US where, within years, I repeated my success. Then I went to Canada and came back. And repeated my success. The trials I have been through  have crippled men taller than me. But I am short. No getting around that.

 But I take consolation in the fact that I met one woman who accepted me as I am. She's a good five inches taller and model beautiful. It was a brief,exquisite experience. And the fact that she was tall made it that much sweeter.

The upside? I have two beautiful children. Better still, my son is short and totally at ease with it and my daughter is gorgeous and smart and sexy. My son is a musical giant with more talent in his 'little' finger than most men could dream of. I guess there is poetic judgement.
Now, will someone please order me a drink. I have been trying, but somehow I can't seem to get the bartender's attention.