Role models matter.

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Well, I don’t want no short people

Don’t want no short people

Don’t want no short people

‘Round here

Forgive me Grammarly, but — don’t want no and not don’t want any — was how Randy Newman ended his most famous song, Short People.

I pay attention to Randy because he’s 6 feet.

I’m not alone stuck in a bias in favor of taller.

For over 100 years, Americans have elected Presidents 4 inches taller than the average male. (source)

Throughout my lifetime the average American male has been two inches taller than me.

I’m 5′ 7″ and the shortest male in at least four generations of the Gardner and Thomas clans.

I’ve grown up with a prejudice against short people.

That’s another reason I like Randy’s song.

It satirizes people like me, who think less of short people.

Even that 5′ 7″ on my driver’s license since 1966 was phony. Motor vehicle clerks believed what you told them.

But the nurses who measure height and weight before doctor’s appointments have always recorded the precise figure, as in five feet six and three-quarters inches.

Words instead of numbers dilute the pain, of being short.

Over the past month, I’ve watched too many World Cup matches.

But I can’t get enough of Argentinian and Barcelona star Lionel Messi considered among the greatest soccer players of all time. (source)

He’s my height.

*

I can’t go back and change how I felt being the smallest boy on the playground.

What if I had known then that another hero, New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, was a 5′ 7″ titan?

Life is hard, particularly for the young.

They need successful people like them in public positions to expand what they imagine they can do.

For me?

At 73.

Anything vertical is good enough.