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Rule #2: (after "Daddy's always right" and "Parents don't have to be fair", which somehow are simultaneously Rule #1) Mommy's short. Daddy says so, and since he's always right, she's short. Mommy's 5'7". Daddy is 6'5".
Then there was High School. Whenever I went somewhere with my friends, I had to sit in the back of the car, because I was the shortest. I was about 5'8" back then. My best friend was (and still is) about 5'11". And my guy friends were mostly between 6'3" and 6'5". They were not even the tallest people in school. (That would be John Navarre.) And poor Mike! Daddy always referred to him as my "short friend" since he was only 6'. He didn't like that too much.
Maybe I need to go back to Wisconsin, because out here, I'm really tired of tripping over all these midgets. My sister Wendy wants to make children under a certain age illegal because they get under her feet. I think they should make anyone under a certain height wear stilts. Really, it's a hazard to have people walking around that close to the ground. You're walking along, and next thing you know, something's holding you back. Then you look down and see a head.
The worst is going through doors. It's always a little awkward when you try to enter a room as someone else is trying to leave, but it's worse when you don't see them. You step up to the door, pull back on the handle and suddenly there's someone eye level with your chest. And if you don't stop in time, their head will be right in it! Very uncomfortable.
And why don't I just see people down there? I'll explain. After years of ballet, twirling and modeling lessons, if there's one thing I can do, it's stand up straight and look straight ahead. (However, I cannot twirl; my baton nearly took out the judge.) Ladies do not look at the floor when they walk; they do not hunch over. They stand with their shoulders back and move with confidence. This creates the following situation: there is a blind spot, similar to in a car. It consists of everything outside of the lower peripheral vision. If I am looking ahead, I can only see the floor so many feet in front of me. The closer something is to my location, the higher it needs to be to fall in my line of sight. An Illustration: 
See me walking all happy, looking straight ahead. I can see only objects in the yellow cone. Notice how the short person is below my line of sight and one step away from being tripped on.
It's also very uncomfortable having to talk to someone short when we are both standing. It feels like I'm being condescending. I'm not trying to be, but I am literally looking down on them. And what are they looking up at? It makes me quite self conscious about what's in my nose. Plus, I've taken pictures of people from down at that angle; it's very unflattering!
I've started counting people I can't see over. The other day, there were two, and one was a woman. And don't blame all this on the heels. I wore 5" heels through most of high school and college, too. This was not a problem then. At least at Vanderbilt my closest girl friend is taller than me, and there's Herman, my 6'6"ish friend from Jamaica. Plus my copyright/torts professor ,who's about 6'5". Of course, he's from Wisconsin too.
Ok, ok. People can't do anything about their genes, and unless they want to go through that leg lengthening process that seems so common overseas, they're out of luck. But still, couldn't they get hats, or big hair or something!
I'm going home to Wisconsin tomorrow. It will be nice to be able to stand when I talk to people, to look people in the eye instead of down their shirt.
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