Nova Baby, The Black Keys

A friend of mine refers to me fairly consistently as “Shorty”.  He thinks it’s funny, since he’s six foot two inches, and I am barely five foot six after stretching and a good night’s sleep.  Not everyone was blessed with height, even if both your father and brother are well over six foot.  As a child, I was consistently one of the shortest in my classes.  Bread crusts and mushrooms were forced on me with the promise that if I ate them, I would grow taller and my hair would curl – well at least one of them worked.  Height has always been a sensitive subject.

Most of my friends are taller than me, either significantly or by a few inches.  I’m used to being the shortest in a group and even when I’m not, I still act like I am.  There have been countless times that I have made short people jokes that have offended someone.  I am used to and comfortable being the shortest, even though some of those closest to me insist upon making deprecating jokes.  I am used to being called Shorty and, against my strongest will, answer to it.  But don’t tell my friend.

One of the biggest adjustments I must make in Panama is to the height of those around me.  At my short stature, I tower over most people in my community.  Another trainee, standing at about six foot four, is approximately twice the height of his host mother.  People are short here.  It’s a fact of life.  Whenever I want to complain about being short, I have to bite my tongue, because in this world, I am not.

When I am traveling on public transportation I find myself crouching to make myself smaller.  I stand out immediately, first from my coloring and then from my height.  Most men in my training community are my height, either barely taller or far shorter.  My host mother teases my brothers since I am taller than all but one, who is the same height as I am.  More than the language, more than the climate, more than anything, I am finding it hard to adjust to being one of the tallest in my community after a lifetime of being one of the shortest.

When family members or friends make jokes about impending marriages to Panamanians, my regular response was that they were too short.  I’m now realizing that that wasn’t a joke.  I’ve begun to be startled when I have to raise my chin to look someone in the eyes.  On a recent trip into Panama, we gringos towered over the rest of this world, making it easy to pull us out of the crowd as we walked along.  We not only stood out because of our skin color and accents, but by our overbearing height.

I’m going to be shocked by the height of the world when I return to the United States.