27/05/2021
For most of my life, I’ve been short. A short kid, a short boy, and finally a short guy. Twenty years in, and I’ve had enough of the open and hidden discrimination that there is against short people. It exists and here’s why I think so.
I stand at a mere 5 ft 3″ and saying I’m proud of it would be the biggest bu****it ever. Height has been and will be the worst obstacle in my life, the elephant in the room that’ll keep making me unsuitable for a leadership position, even if I have stellar qualifications. It’ll keep warranting sarcastic comments, from girls whom I’ve never met or talked to before. It’ll definitely make it impossible to fly with the cloud or sail through the seas. And many more.
If you didn’t know, height is mostly determined by genetics. Just as you can’t change being black or woman, you cant change being short. The ridiculous ways people try to change their height is nothing short of bleaching the skin or having a gender-changing surgery. They include, among other things, hanging like a monkey for long hours and cutting open your shin bone to allow it to grow.
When I was a child, comments ranged from friendly “baba beshi kore khaba, lomba hote hobe” to downright rage towards my parents, “bachcha ke khawan na, eto pichchi kno?”. The ones with good intentions made it worse with their sympathies and advices, to rectify something my 8-year-old self wasn’t even aware was a problem.
Fast forward a few years, I realized there was no action or romantic heroes that looked short. My adolescent mind panicked and searched through the internet looking for a miracle cure that would save me from ultimate humiliation. Despite regularly burning up 1/4th of my family’s monthly internet package, I found none that proved effective. I couldn’t lose hope though, so I carried on doing pull-ups and hung upside down.
In my mid-teenage, it dawned on me that I would probably, forever be in the short spectrum. How short, that was the question. All those years of intensive research on human heights and looking for scientific ways to improve it, has failed. Despair engulfed me, my throat closed in.
I knew the cost of losing this particular battle against Nature, it meant to my mind, all those dreams that I’d, where I was a military personnel, commanding my fleet to serve justice, or an industry leader with a blueprint to save humanity from the next crisis, or just simply having a good moment with my wife, all those dreams kind of died down. To my teenage mind, being tall meant an easy way to success, and you see I wasn’t totally wrong....- Read full writing at: https://urbaneverse.com/why-dont-you-grow-a-bit-taller/
Wordsmith: Labib al-Barr
