Ocular Fusion

If you’ve spent any time at all reading Ocular Fusion, you’re no doubt aware of my enduring love for basketball. If you were to go further and scan the pages of my elementary school scrapbook, you would find that I listed basketball as my “favorite activity” from second grade through seventh (there was that little “tag” business in first grade, but that hardly counts). I lived for ACC basketball and the Boston Celtics, and whenever I played in a schoolyard pickup game, I took on the persona, if not the skill, of my favorite player, John “Hondo” Havlicek.

However, there was one problem. I was short. In today’s politically correct climate, I would be more thoughtfully and humanely labeled “vertically challenged.” Even though I found myself on the losing end of a game of genetic roulette, I compensated to a large degree by developing a reliable outside jump shot. Still, I knew that Laurie Partridge was probably never going to give me the time of day and that I would rarely have the opportunity to venture into the paint where the big boys, who could pack one of my layups as easily as they could pick their own teeth, loomed like vultures scanning the menu for the roadkill du jour.

By September 1974, I had heard just about every “shorty” joke in the book and was well-versed in how to run the typical elementary school insult gauntlet—cover your head and run as fast as your stubby legs will carry you. However, as is evident in the following passage from my long-lost but recently rediscovered 7th grade journal, I appear to have had some “unresolved issues:”

September 5, 1974

Well here I go again talking about something that bugs me. Well it used to at least. And that’s people calling me “shorty.” It really doesn’t bother me that much now, but it used to JUST KILL ME! Even though I feel out of place when I’ve got to look up to everybody, I really don’t mind it too much. I may be little, but I believe that I’m just as strong as some guys. Like just yesterday I did 172 situps, more than anyone else in our room. I know I’m not going to be a super athlete, but I hope there are some jobs for short people!

(ed: Ms. Fine, my 7^th grade teacher at Burnt Chimney Elementary School, was no doubt pleased that her little psych experiment was eliciting such unbridled honesty and raw emotions. She wrote in the margins: “Good job, Mike!”)

Ok, I have to ask: do you find this journal entry believable? Do you really think that I had made peace with my “stumpiness?” I count three instances in which I assert that I was “ok” with being short. I don’t know about you, but I doth protest too much, methinks.

No, I’m thinking that back in ’74, it still bothered me quite a bit, so to speak, that I was short. And you know what? IT STILL DOES! In fact, IT JUST KILLS ME! There for a while after I sired three sons with Eyegal, life was good. I was the towering king, hovering benevolently over my diminutive domain. But now, two of them little suckers are taller than I am (it really makes me feel out of place when I have to look up to them) and the third is closing faster than a fully-charged Klingon cruiser chasing a dilithium crystal-depleted starship. And you know what? I CANT STAND IT!

Whew, it’s good to that off my tiny little chest. Oh well, as surely as the apple falls from the tree, it’s inevitable that sons increase while fathers decrease. All my years of studying physics, though, never prepared me for the myriad of surprising and deleterious ways that gravity can ruin my day, especially first thing in the morning when I look in the mirror.

The short of the story (sorry) is that I never compensated well enough to play varsity basketball in high school, but I did develop into a decent enough athlete to letter in cross country and tennis. And, gravity notwithstanding, I’m still pretty consistent from beyond the college arc and on a good day can even can an NBA-regulation trey or two. If you don’t believe me, just ask Number Three Son who always makes the mistake of guarding me too loosely.

Oh, and those 172 sit-ups? Little did I know then how much I would need those later in life. In fact, these days I don’t know what I would do without all that muscle tone I built up in those early years. It comes in quite handy each morning as I suck in my gut prior to buttoning my pants and is an absolute necessity for maintaining that uncomfortably tonic posture for the remainder of the day. I bet a lot of guys my age aren’t strong enough to do that. To (ahem) top it off, I found a job in which being “vertically challenged” can actually be an advantage, and, last time I checked anyway, Eyegal didn’t seem to care how tall I am.

Hey Randy, I know you meant the song to be ironic and you were well intended, but it still deserves to be said: short people do too got plenty of reasons to live.