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July 10, 2006
Shortened Expectations
I spent Saturday night at a Scrap Mania! event with Angie, her mom, and Tempe. It was a lot of fun with excellent company, and I finally finished a project I've been working on since March, but I wouldn't describe the evening as manic. Maybe it's just me, and the anti-manic drugs are finally kicking in. "Scrap Mild Excitement with Bouts of Extreme Silliness" would be a more appropriate name.
This was the second time I've met Tempe. We met for coffee with Angie a few months ago. I'm pretty sure I didn't stand up in Tempe's presence during that meeting.
Saturday night, we got so scrapping manic that we had to flee the store and run to the other side of the mall for espresso. While riding the escalator, Tempe said, "Your personea is much taller than you are."
"That's because I'm standing on the step below you," I said.
"No, that's not it. I noticed it when we were walking. You're really short. How tall are you, anyway?"
"I'm five-foot-three. Or so."
"No way. I'm five-foot-four and I can see the top of your head," she said as we walked off the escalator on equal ground. She swung around to stand back-to-back with me. "Angie! How much taller am I than her?"
Angie turned around and looked at us with a perfectly straight face. "A few inches, maybe?"
"See? Told ya! And I touched your butt!"
Yes, Tempe and I touched butts. In public. Manic, I tell you! Manic! Manic with access to many, many, many varieties of scissors!
"Okay, well, maybe I'm five-foot-two and three-quarters," I conceded.
The whole height thing cracked me up, because I have never felt short, even though I obviously am down-right Lilliputan in stature. Most of the time, I feel like I'm about 5'8" tall, which means I misjudge my movements and fall down a lot.
I was a freakishly tall kid. I hit the five-foot mark the summer before third grade. When school started, they had to get a taller desk for me from the middle school. My legs were so long that, if I sat with my feet flat on the floor, my knees would raise the desk off the floor. In the two years that followed, I grew three inches (although that measure is currently in dispute), then stopped. When fifth grade ended, I left for summer vacation, confident that I was, as always, the tallest kid in the class.
When I returned to school three months later, roughly half the kids had outgrown me. A few years later, the extra-tall mother of one of my friends expressed her disappointment that I had opted to not join her in the over-six-foot club.
Did I mention that I have my current insatiable coffee habit because my granny used to give me coffee and Archway cookies for breakfast when I'd spend the night with her, starting when I was about six years old? I blame her for preventing me from fulfilling my long-legged destiny. Good thing she didn't share her smokes with me, or I probably wouldn't have hit the five-feet mark, ever.
So, I've never felt short, even though I am. I forget I'm short, until someone reminds me. Or until I fall because my legs aren't long enough to reach where I thought they would reach.
I must say, I like having a tall personea. Truly, I am a giant, trapped in a squat body. Bigger than life, Baby!
Posted by Robin at July 10, 2006 02:03 PM
Comments
You and I grew at the same rate at the same time in life and are the same height.
Further proof that we're identical cousins.
Posted by: DixiePeach at July 10, 2006 03:19 PM
Dix, I could have sworn you were a lot taller than me.
Seriously!
Cousins! Identical bigger-than-life cousins!
Posted by: Robin at July 10, 2006 03:21 PM
At least you're taller than I!
Posted by: Julie at July 10, 2006 03:35 PM
I don't know why, but I kind of wanted to yell out "Summer of George!" after reading this post. Crazy people usually don't question their sanity, right? So I'm probably not nuts. You think?
Posted by: Exena at July 10, 2006 07:09 PM
Just this weekend I tried to tell my father that I am 5'3" and he couldn't believe that I was even that tall. This is why I have many high-heeled shoes.
Posted by: Melissa at July 11, 2006 09:32 AM
..Archway oatmeal cookies are a balm to the psyche...
Posted by: pharmgirl at July 11, 2006 04:12 PM
I never noticed you were short...makes me wonder if we measured, would our butts touch?
Posted by: pkb at July 11, 2006 10:03 PM
Hmm. You were, when we met, exactly the way I imagined you would be, height included. And I will never tell you that you're short. Because I am 5'3"-ish, too, a height that never really seems short to me.
(Only squat. But only because my big, fat head forces the rest of my otherwise lithe, slender body groundward. Heh. Delusion is the new black, you know.)
Posted by: Summer at July 12, 2006 12:48 PM
