VERTICALLY CHALLENGED

I'm short.  At my adult height, I measure 5' 3".  With 3 brothers that are at least 5' 11" or taller and two older sisters who are both slightly taller than me, I've always been the shrimp in the family.  My thirteen year old granddaughter loves to stand next to me every time she sees me to see if she's passed me up in height.  At the most current measurement last week, she's within a inch or two of passing me up.  Great.

I recently unpacked my "Treasures of Truth" from when I was a teenager.  "Treasures of Truth" was a large binder given to girls of Mutual age.  The binder is divided into sections titled "My Story", "My Family", "My Friends".  In the "My Friends" section, I found my class pictures from elementary school...grades two through five.  I showed these pictures to my granddaughter and asked if she could pick me out of the group of kids.  She couldn't until I told her to look for the shortest girl in the picture.  She quickly found me in all the pictures because kneeling or standing, I was definitely the shortest.

I didn't start to get my height (well, if you can call 5' 3" height) until the ninth grade.  I was 4' 9"  in the ninth grade and was almost  5' 2" in the tenth grade. Being short and petite, my mother had to make most of my clothes so that I would be dressed age appropriate.  Being short, I was always on the front row and on the end when singing in school chorus and choir.  Being short, I can never reach the top shelf without a stool.

Being vertically challenged has been a challenge.  I hope that in the next life, I have the two or three inches missing in the length of  my legs so that they match up with my long torso.  I'd probably be at least 5' 6".  And it would be a few years, and not months, before my thirteen year old grand daughter is taller than me.

Correction:  It has been brought to my attention by both of my sisters that they are and, as adults, always have been shorter than me.  Maybe, I think of them as taller because they reached their maximum height several years ahead of me and I had to look up them.  Even so, I was still called a "shrimp" by people outside the family.