I am a shorty. I stand at a meager 5 feet. Notice there is no inches. Just 5 feet. I have dealt with short jokes all of my life…”good things come in small packages…you’re not short, you are height challenged.”
Harde-harde-har!!
I’ve had numerous nicknames bestowed upon me but the most common was always “Little Melissa” because people needed to differentiate me from all of the tall Melissa’s amongst us. Besides being short, I was always chubby too so I guess being called “Little Melissa” wasn’t too bad compared to the alternative of “Chubby Melissa”.
My whole family is short, going back generations on both sides with my Mom as the mascot at a whopping 4’10’’. What we lack in height we make up with in the forms of spirit and charisma! Well, at least my Mom does, she is a little firecracker.
When I became an adult and started down the path of dating, my Mom once said, “Now Melissa, make sure you find yourself a tall guy. We have to get some height in this family because we are one generation away from being the side show at the circus.”
Nice, huh?! Of course she was joking (I think) and of course I would never gauge a potential suitor based on their height or lack thereof. No, I just wanted a nice guy. So I dated a lot of guys in varying heights and sizes.
And then I met my husband. He is 6’3’’.
On our wedding day my husband said, “I have married into a family of Hobbits.”
That is a total of 15 inches taller than me. By far, the tallest guy I ever dated and he is the one I went on to marry and produce 3 children with. Even though his height wasn’t the contributing factor in me picking him to spend my life with, I can’t help but to be curious how this will affect our children. Thus far, my DNA proves to be making a forefront in their height department. They are all extremely short for their age.
That is why I was excited when I found this link the other day:
http://children.webmd.com/healthtool-kids-height-predictor
You type in the mother and father’s heights, the gender of the child and their current height and age and it spews out the estimated height of what they will be when they reach adulthood.
According to these calculations my daughter is going to be 5’2’’, my middle son is going to be 5’9’’ and our youngest is going to be 5’11’’.
I was pretty excited about these results. I realize it could be a bunch of baloney because it comes from WebMD (they have diagnosed me with terminal illnesses for years even though I only had a slight pain in my elbow). However, these little pieces of information give me hope. I am going to quit worrying that my kid’s futures lie in the hands of the side show at the circus.
And well, if it is wrong…so be it. Everyone knows….good things come in small packages!
Motherhood Is An Art 