Blogs

I pride myself on having a wide range of female friends.

And I mean wide range rather literally as several of my girlfriends happen to be clustered at the extreme ends of the height spectrum. Over the years, I have listened sympathetically to each end gripe about the ridiculous-to-rude remarks they routinely endure, but lately it's become almost a competition about who has it worse, the under-talls or the over-talls. I feel their pain, and if your personal altitude has exposed you to unfair ridicule and mockery, I feel your pain as well. But you all are not the only ones suffering injustice on the vertical plane.

Why leave me out? This is still America, gosh darn it, and I intend to claim my fair share of victimhood.

Now hear this: middle dwellers suffer, too. We are your mothers, your sisters and your daughters, although it's likely you never noticed us as we blend into the crowd without distinction. We of nondescript height are neither charmingly petite nor alluringly statuesque. We are stuck in the middle, part of the pack, just one of the herd. If height were hair color, we'd be dishwater blond. If height were grades, we'd be a "C" average. We are neither rare, nor well-done; we are plainly and unremarkably medium. Medium, a breath away from mediocre.

We are the usual; you are the unusual. We are the typical; you are the atypical. We are the expected; you are the exceptional. Let's face it, we average-heighters put the ordinary in extraordinary. Even the Bible eschews those of us who occupy the middle ground. It says we, the lukewarm, being neither hot nor cold, will be spit out of God's mouth. Spit out of the mouth of the Almighty (who presumably made us this way in the first place!). That's a bit more severe than having to suffer foolish comments like "How's the weather up there?" or "You don't have far to go when you fall down."

You, both the height-gifted and the height-challenged, command attention wherever you go. Heads turn and tongues wag when you walk in a room because you are, folks say,"something to see." The most people say about us middle-of-the-roaders, if they say anything at all, is that we are nothing to write home about. So, tall ones and small ones, be grateful for your major or minor stature. It accords you recognition we fair-to-middling types will never attain. Tiptoes can never lift me high enough nor slouching push me low enough to be of note, a status you achieve just by being who you are. And who better to be other than yourself?

Come to think of it, who better for any of us - high, low or somewhere in between - to be other than ourselves? I hereby declare the height-whining competition null and void. (But, I still think I should have won!)

- Lee Gaitan

Lee Gaitan is the author of two books, Falling Flesh Just Ahead and My Pineapples Went to Houston - Finding the Humor in My Dashed Hopes, Broken Dreams and Plans Gone Outrageously Awry. She also has written a chapter in the bestselling book, The Divinity of Dogs. Her work has appeared on The Huffington Post, Better After 50, Mothers Always Write, Midlife Boulevard, Fab Over Fifty and The Good Men Project. She lives in suburban Atlanta with her husband and dog and blogs at Don't Just Bounce, Bounce Back. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.