This morning I stuck around my place for a while before leaving for work because I was expecting someone to come by. A nurse was coming by to perform a checkup for some insurance purposes. I wasn’t sure what to expect. In my mind I was imagining some motherly small woman with a no-nonsense attitude. When I answered the door I was greeted by a rather large woman with crooked teeth. Go figure. Anyway, after the long questionnaire she took my pulse and my blood pressure readings. I think I was able to impress her with my relatively low heart rate. After all of my hard work running, I can get my resting heart rate when I wake up to go as low as mid 40s. For the nurse’s test she got a reading of 52 beats per minute. That’s pretty damn healthy. My blood pressure was rather good too. I was half expecting it to be a little bit high, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, this is all well and good. There was one test though that kind of blew my mind. She basically needed to take my height. After checking, she told me the reading she got. I was shocked. I’m used to thinking that my height is X, but she measured something that was two inches shorter. I asked her if she was serious. She said she was. I told her what I thought my height should be. She laughed and said that whenever she measures people at my expected height she really has to talk up to them whereas with me she didn’t really have to look up that high. I didn’t want to press it any further, but secretly I thought that she was just crazy.

Well, after checking my other measurements, my weight, and asking for a urine sample she was on her way. As soon as she left I looked for a stubby pencil, stood against a wall and marked my height. I then got a tape measure and took a look. Wouldn’t you know it, I really was wrong all along: I really am two inches shorter than what I had originally believed. I suppose it wouldn’t be such a big deal, however, there’s kind of an unspoken stigma when it comes to shorter guys, is there not? Back when I (believed I) was average height, it wasn’t a big deal, but now that I’m under the average it’s plainly annoying. Interesting though. When I look up the average heights of men in Canada, I’m under, but if I compare myself to the average heights of people in the Philippines I’m over. I guess that makes sense given the difference in standards of living. What the heck, man?

You know, I think that I’ll forget all about it in a few weeks. I mean, physically nothing about me has changed. If people around me treated me a certain way (subconsciously) because of my height they will continue to do so even after my discovery. The only thing that could possibly change is my attitude, right? If I suddenly act like there’s something wrong with me then people will just feed off of that energy, yes? So, hey, it’s just business as usual. Jason is still Jason.