Life is tough for a short man.
Yes, I said it, it sucks. I know. I’m a guy who’s 5’4″.
I’ve pretty much been short my entire life. In my family, I’m the shortest guy.
I’m not sure what I missed, all I could remember is everyone had always been taller than me. I also remember getting teased quite a lot.
- Dude you’re short!
- HA! HA! you’re short.
- You’re not growing
So what does it feels like to be a short guy?
Okay. I’ll break this into a few phrases
- Growing up
- Adulthood
- Sports
- Social events
Growing up:
At six years old, I got bullied a lot. Older boys would pick on me and once I got thrown into a garbage bin. When I was nine, during a trip, kids picked on me and pushed me around just because I was short and nerdy.
Then comes the time where we would meet all our relatives. I hate those occasions. Why? Growing in a typical Chinese family, it’s pretty normal for relatives to compare things like
- Materialistic stuff
- Education
- HEIGHT
I hated it when relatives make us kids line up and show and make fun at the shortest one. Guess who it was? ME!
Sports
Then came sports, since I was skinny, nerdy, and short when I was young, no coach wanted to train me.
First, I tried soccer, and they wouldn’t bother to teach me, so I was made to play a defender. I was pretty good at it.
That didn’t last so long since I got bored doing nothing. I decided to quit after a few years. Then I joined swimming for fun because I once nearly drown because I was too short and the shallow end felt deep. I became pretty good at it and used my height to my advantage. I was pretty good at breaststroke since it was made for smaller people as we had less friction. Oh, I once won a silver medal for it.
Adulthood
I get rejected at work before because I was short.
‘How old are you’ they asked
18, I answered.
Hmmm… you don’t look 18.
They said I look like a kid. Maybe it was a combination of my face and height.
I find myself getting ignored by assholes a lot. The reason I call them that is because they are judgemental. Yes, people are judgemental.
Adulthood is like not people holding hands around the campfire and singing Kumbaya.
When I made pitches or presentations during work, I get ignored a lot. Until of course they found out about my credibility, then they probably start listening to what I have to say. Otherwise, they’ll just be rude and start looking at their phones when I start talking.
Social gathering
I remember my first networking event. A friend of mine, Thomas Marzano who works at Philips was speaking in at a social media seminar in Singapore. He was kind to get me a ticket there.
There at the event, people ignored me. It was very humiliating. Everyone came from corporate world and social media was pretty new back then. Since I have baby face, and worst I was short, I pretty much got ignored for the entire event.
Here’s the funny part, during the events they gave away prizes. When it was announced that I won the prize for the being the best at social media, people started talking to me. One guy who refused to give me his business card came up to me right after the event and gave it to me.
I also remembered attending another social media event. They were talking to one another and ignored me too until they started to talk about ‘followers’, and I has more than all of them combined. Then they began to talk to me and to ask me questions and paying attention to me. Before that, they will just respond and just turn away. That is how people would treat you at social events. They will look down on you. I’m not saying everyone will, but ASSHOLES will. The corporate world is filled with many of them.
This is just the tip of the iceberg though. There had been many other incidents since.
Seriously, I think about this weird scenarios all the time. It plagues my mind how I would get judged about my height all the time, but NO it doesn’t happen all the time though. I’m sure sharing scenarios of when that happened.
Thank god I work online. This allows me to hide my height and allow my skills and work to shine itself. I doubt it would have the same effect if I went for an interview and talked about it.
Like I said earlier, it’s not all that bad though.
Having had a physical disadvantage (height), it has made me stronger and more competitive. Since I am short, I do feel the need to work my fucking butt off to compensate my height. I work hard when I train, and I work hard in most areas of my work.
My girlfriend has a love and hate relationship with me being competitive. . She often tells me ‘why do you have to be so competitive.’
“why not” i respond to her all the time.
I feel the need to build my own credibily with my work and most recently how I look. I used to think since I was short I never needed to dress up. That has changed when I started to dress up better.
What is like to be short as a guy?
It’s a phrase that all short guys have to go through. First, you’ll hate it, then you’ll be okay with it and soon you’ll accept it.
I used to hate my height in my youth. Now that I’m 28, I’ve accepted the fact that I am short. There’s no point lying to myself or trying how to grow height.
Like I said earlier, being short has it’s mix of good and bad days. We just have to conquer the demons inside us and accept the fact we are who we are, and people can’t change a single thing about that.
Being short is a daily reminder of how judgemental people are. People will judge you no matter who you are.
- Short
- Overweight
- Poor
- etc.
It’s just how life is, but we shouldn’t be sad just because off assholes like this. Sure there are bad days, but I’ve not let that affect who I am today.
Kick ass. That’s all I can advise you. Don’t let these people have the satisfaction of ‘looking down on you’ 😛
