Being Short in a Tall Century

Here we go again. North Korea has exploded another nuclear device underground, defying the World. It has been reported that the people of North Korea are starving to death, while a crazy "leader" fools around with "WMD's".. supposedly, he is also about to give up his "leadership" to a relative who probably is as mad as he is.

I read that he is upset that most world leaders are a lot taller than he is. (I'v heard that he wears 6" heels in public.) Maybe this is why he acts the way he does. A lot of the other tyrants were quite short: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and many others. Of course, the matter of shortness has changed quite a bit since I was a child.

When I was eleven years old, I was 5'7" tall and towered over most of the kids I played with. At that time, around the WWII era, average height of Army enlistees was 5'6" (the same height, it might be noted, of Hitler and Stalin). Everyone thought that I was going to grow to be quite tall. However, my body decided that this was the time to stop growing upwards, and stayed at that height for many more years, while all of my pals grew much taller. (Could my mother have been right to say that smoking would stunt my growth? Because, at my eleven year birthday, I started smoking those black, smelly Parodi cigars.)

Anyway, when I was getting ready for being drafted into the Korean War, the Army average height had jumped to 5'7". Now, instead of being above average, I was just "average".

By the time I got back from my "wartime duties" (haha).. the average was 5'8" and has been growing up steadily for years. I think that the last time I saw statistics on height, the average was now up to 5'10". And now... since I am an old dude, I have shrunk! I don't even want to think about how far below average height I am now. But it doesn't really matter. When you are old, people expect you to be short. A friend of mine would be 6'3" if he was able to stand upright. Instead, I can see the top of his head when he "stands" next to me. He is 80 years old, so what does it matter?

I've written somewhere in these blogs about the time I secretly got some of my co-workers at Social Security to attend a meeting. There was no agenda and the only requirement for attendance was they had to be 6'3" or taller. I never did find out if any of them realized by looking around the room that there were no short people there. (Think about that, Randy Newman!)

Take a look at old movies.. Leading men like Humphrey Bogart were short. In the movie Shane, Alan Ladd had to stand on a box during his scenes with other actors. (He was 5'7" supposedly, but probably that was an exageration.) However, there are still a few short famous people around today: I read that France's Nicolas Sarkozey stood on his tiptoes for his photograph with President Obama and Michelle.

Is it the food that is making people so tall? Can we blame this on fast food? I understand that the cattle in the US are raised on growth hormones. Are those chemicals passed on to the eating public? Are vegetarians who do not partake of meat shorter than those that do?

Has anyone done a study on the eating habits of basketball players?

Two of my childhood acquaintances were not growing very fast and were very short, even by the standards of 60 years ago. They were taken by their parents to some doctor (endocronologist?)
where they were given shots of some kind of growth chemical. (I never found out what.) But, whatever it was, it worked.. they grew taller... or was it just that they were late bloomers?

What about Japanese people who were quite short before WWII? Aren't they much taller now that American occupational forces introduced hamburgers and hotdogs into their diet?

And what about the Chinese.. always shown in American movies as very short people... now they probably have more 7-footers than any other country. (Of course, they also have more people than anywhere else.)

Where is all of this going? A scientific study that I read some years ago recognized this tallness phenomena and said that this could only end in disaster because mankind's optimal supportable population would have to be a lot shorter because of the dwindling of Earth's resources. A study I read about last week said that information flows to the brains of short people much quicker than to those of tall people, and this had to be an evolutionary advantage.

Bottom line: so what! Be happy with yourself, even if you are short. The world can't afford any more short dictators with inferiority complexes.