The Immeasure of a Man

At a recent doctor’s appointment, the nurse decided to measure not only my weight (disappointing), but my height. I was shocked that my height is now five feet, five and three quarters inches. Excuse me?

How did I suddenly become Scott Carey (whose name even sounds short), the diminishing (collapsing?) star of The Incredible Shrinking Man? Thanks a lot, Richard Matheson, or should I call you Dick?

My drivers license (certainly a credible if now unreliable document in these interesting times) declares that my height is five feet, eight inches. So let’s keep my shortitude between us.

That height can even be a current fact about anyone is surprising. After all, we expect weight to vary, unfortunately in one direction, yet now, I find height shares the same variable, unfortunately in the other direction. Pounds propound, and inches deinch.

So where did those two and a quarter inches go? That small diselevation is my shrinking tribute to the road gods, in whose service I have spent five decades regularly running four to five miles a day, four to five times a week. Compaction of the vertebrae is no small matter.

I console myself with the absolute fact that all of us are the same height lying down.

I have never been tall, but I have been taller, and there are three places I have always been tall.

When I lived on Okinawa, I was tall. Ineffective nutrition on that island in the years following WWII meant that many of my age and older were short. In my eight years of residence, I grew accustomed to seeing eye to eye with colleagues, but back on other land claimed by America, I found myself lost in the crowd, a head shorter, with no clear view of the movie screen.

Another place I am still tall is the gym. I can, but do not, overlook my fellow short guys among the weights and machines as we pump iron, grunting grandly and adding bulk since towering is no longer an option. Getting wider over getting taller means I can always see whether the machine I want to use next is free.

The other place I am tall is the hardware store. Freaks (no offense) of 5’7’’ or more are rare in the aisles of pliers, paint, and plumbing supplies. No matter what the home improvement, the little guys appear to be the ones working on the house. Generally, the man handy at home is tall where the tools are.

Short are the benefits of shortening (and apt is the pun on a solid fat used to make pastries), but there is one. Every day, I have more people to whom I can look up.