Short people, as it turns out, have nasty little tempers. : Short and Sweet

I received a telephone call the other day from a man who said he was sick and tired of my sneering references to short people.

“Fill me in,” I said.

“Fill you in on what?”

“On what I said about short people.”

“You don’t remember what you write?”

“Sometimes. Did I make reference to their nasty little feet?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“That sounds like me. And did I say it’s tough looking fit when you’re short?”

“You sure did.”

“I vaguely remember that too. Tell me,” I said, “are you short?”

“I am 5 feet 6,” he said, “and proud.”

“You’re proud of being 5-6?”

“I am proud,” he said, proudly, “of being me.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have hung up on Shorty. I rarely debate yesterday’s columns, and I do not believe proud, short people have anything important to say.

His call, however, came at a propitious time. Others have communicated with me about my references to short people, especially short men, and I was thinking about exploring the issue in a column devoted exclusively to those of less than heroic stature.

A short column, of course.

One unsigned letter called me a “height-bigot” and said I would no doubt be one of those who would practice dwarf-tossing if given the opportunity.

No way. I rarely engage in strenuous physical activities, and tossing a dwarf strikes me as being more than I care to undertake. A baby, perhaps, but not a dwarf.

One of the phone-caller’s demands was that negative use of the word short be eliminated or at least modified. He mentioned short-sighted, short-changed, short-winded and short-minded.

“Short-minded?” I said. “I don’t think that’s a legitimate term.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, proudly but defensively, “just keep your ears open and you’ll hear it used in a highly derogatory manner. Unless you’re short of hearing.”

“I think you mean hard of hearing.”

“Don’t mess with me.”

Well, OK, maybe they are negative terms, but Short Cake didn’t say what they ought to be replaced with.

In the 1960s, black activists decided the word Negro was a white word and wanted it eliminated, and away it went. They said black is black and it’s beautiful and that’s the way it is.

Shortly (you’ll forgive the expression) thereafter, feminists demanded that sexist elements of the language be corrected, and away went chairman, councilman, manhole cover and man the lifeboats, man. In popped Person.

But if a man isn’t short, what is he?

I went around asking several short people, one of whom demanded that I first define short. I said any male over the age of 25 who is under 5-feet 5-inches. It was an arbitrary choice.

I had no idea how tall this particular man was until the little fella glared at me and said, “I don’t consider that short.”

I looked down on him, so to speak, and replied, “Well, I guess it depends on point of view. Yours happens to be lower than mine.”

He didn’t think that was a very funny joke and called me an obscene name, so I moved on. Short people, as it turns out, have nasty little tempers. I could have said they were short-tempered, but I didn’t. Well, I guess I did, but what the hell.

I hadn’t realized until now that short people felt so strongly about being short. I am not tall myself, although I am over the arbitrary short-limit. What I lack in height, however, I make up for in bluster and swagger.

But even bluster and swagger do not compensate for the fact that I am less than 6 feet tall, a shortcoming for which my son, alas, will never forgive me. He wanted taller genes. I heard him tell his mother once that he wished she had married Larry Bird.

Back to the problem: With what word does one replace short? I asked a friend and he suggested we replace it with skimpy. Another offered economic. A third said Negro.

Negro?

“Sure,” he said. “We can thus reintroduce a word that was already in existence and avoid the necessity of having to invent a new word. Negro is sort of a word-in-waiting, without current meaning.”

“That won’t do,” I said, trembling at the very notion. “When someone asks if you’re short or tall, you can’t reply, ‘Negro.’ ”

“But it won’t mean Negro,” he argued, “it will mean short.”

“No sale.”

Then one day I was in a movie theater, and I ordered a Diet Pepsi.

“You want regular, large or super?” the girl behind the counter asked.

“Small,” I said.

“We don’t have small,” she said. “We have regular, large or super.”

“I want the smallest one.”

“We have regular, large . . . “

“I know, I know. Give me . . . “

Then it hit me. Not short, medium and tall, but regular, large and super!

“You’ve done personkind a great favor!” I said, leaving the theater.

From now on, there are no short men. Just regular-sized guys.

“That ought to hold the little suckers,” I said to my wife.

“Maybe from now on,” she said, “you’ll lay off physical humor.”

Fat chance.