On Being Small

You know what they say about a man with small hands: he probably has a disproportionately big heart.

All my life I’ve been pretty small, in the most literal, physical sense of the word. I’m short (5 inches below the average American male height) and thin. For better or for worse, I’m pretty proportional, so I also have small hands, small feet, and even small ears. Being small introduces a unique set of challenges—but also advantages—to my daily life, some of them really big and others a bit more subtle.

When you’re short, people assume your biggest problem is that you can never reach the top shelf. While that is true sometimes, I think a bigger problem for short people actually stems from tall people. Tall people standing in front of you at a concert so that you can’t see anything. Tall people sitting in front of you at the movies so you can’t see the screen. Tall people walking into you because they’re so tall they never look down far enough to see where your head starts, so they just don’t even notice you’re there. These sound like minor inconveniences—and they generally are—but they quickly build up when they happen day after day.

At the same time that tall people can cause problems for short people, though, there’s also a weird symbiotic relationship that occurs. When you’re small, for some reason tall people really like picking you up. Piggy back rides, shoulder rides, fireman’s carry—you get them all! And it happens a lot more often than you’d expect, too. The benefit to the tall person, I can only assume, is that they look strong and powerful by doing it. The benefit to the small person is that you get a fun ride out of it!

 

 

Get you a group of friends that lift you up

 

Unfortunately, being small, and especially short, makes taking selfies with more than two other friends an almost impossible task. If you’re the one holding the camera, your arms are never long enough to be able to fit everyone in the frame. If you’re like me and also have tiny hands, it’s hard to balance an iPhone in just one hand, so physically pressing the button to take the photo—whether on the screen or the volume button—is also a struggle. If you’re not the one holding the camera, you might as well not even bother smiling, because no matter how high on your tippy-toes you stand, you won’t make it in the frame, unless you stand right next to the person with the camera.

 

And I was really standing on my tippy-toes this time, too!

 

When you’re small, the scariest roller coasters at amusement parks are not the ones that go really fast or the ones that have huge drops, but rather the ones that use lap bars as the restraint system. The bars are never secure enough to actually keep you in place! The lap bar hovers a solid 4-5 inches above your waist, leaving ample room for you to go sliding across the full length of the row you’re sitting in. This happens especially when I go on the pirate ship ride at Six Flags: I have to hold onto the bar so tightly when the ride starts going upside down because I could honestly slip out and over the bar.

 

If I were that man sitting alone in a row I’d have fallen off the side of the ship many swings ago.

 

Being small isn’t only problematic at public venues like amusement parks or movie theaters, however; it also makes shopping really difficult. Clothes, I’ll admit, are generally not too hard to find. Thankfully there are stores like American Eagle that carry my pant size and have XS shirts. Buying shoes when you have small feet, however, is a whole other story. The average U.S. male shoe size is 10. I have size 6.5 feet. Most adult shoe stores don’t carry any sizes below 7, and some don’t even carry below 8. The kids section, in contrast, generally carries sizes that are just slightly smaller than my own. This means that, except for sometimes sneakers, I can only ever buy new shoes online.

Last winter, I really wanted a pair of chukka boots. After exhausting every corner of Famous Footwear in the Natick Mall to no avail, I went on Amazon to see if maybe I could find my size online. After a week of on-and-off searching, I finally found a single brand that carried chukka boots in my size. I placed the order and waited giddily for my shoes to arrive.

A couple weeks later, they finally came. What I didn’t realize at the time that I bought them, though, was that they weren’t just regular chukka boots. They actually came from a retailer called “tallmanshoes.com,” which is a Chinese shoe company that specializes in boots that make you taller. Inside each boot was a really thick insole that served to lift your foot up higher off the ground. I actually shoot up to like 5’8″ when I wear the boots, which is a pretty significant increase. Though it’s not at all what I was looking for when I first ordered the shoes, the height gain is weirdly effective and I’ve grown to really like the style of the boots. The one downside, though, is that even though the boots are technically my size, they’re still a little big and the company doesn’t sell any smaller sizes. As a result, whenever I wear them, I have to put in a second insole and wear two thick socks on each foot.

Speaking of socks, believe it or not, buying socks is actually even more problematic than shoes. I know what you’re thinking: But Ariel, don’t most socks come in a one-size-fits-all package? Doesn’t it say they fit sizes 5 through 12? Well maybe the package says that, but it’s never true! Every time I buy long socks—like dress socks or boot socks—they’re always too long for my foot. The heel part of the sock ends up over my Achilles tendon, if not even higher up on my ankle. I guess the obvious solution is to scrunch up the sock a bit more around my toes, but that makes walking uncomfortable.

Perhaps an even weirder struggle of being small for me, though, is that I have a lot of trouble finding good ear buds because of how small my ears are. I learned early on in life that the free Apple ear buds that come with iPods and iPhones slide out of my ears way too easily while I’m wearing them. Instead, I usually use over-ear headphones or ear buds that hook around my ears. It makes sharing ear buds with other people—like on a bus ride or something—tough because their Apple ear buds won’t fit my ears and my hook ear buds are kind of uncomfortable for people who aren’t used to the style. The bright side, though, is that I’ll never end up spending $200 on Apple AirPods, since I know they’ll just fall out of my ears and get lost the first day I try to use them.

 

My trusty Mpow Flame hook-style ear buds

 

Overall, being small can certainly be frustrating, but most days I look back on my challenges buying shoes or taking a group photo and laugh. For what it’s worth, being small makes me unique; with a height, weight, and shoe size like mine, no one can say I’m just average. And at the end of the day, I’m thankful that at least I’m healthy. So let them say what they want about the man with small hands–– ’cause he’s doing great!