It could scarcely be worse

OK, and only because I saw two of them today within about five minutes of each other, but I wonder what it's like to be a little person.

I mean, you take people like me, who bitch and complain about being stared at, for whatever reason. I've got different reasons in different places. For example, if I go into a gay bar, I get stared at because I'm tall and I'm a woman, and you've got to look twice to determine whether I was born with fallopian tubes. If I go into a hipster bar, I get stared at because I'm about fifteen points above the average hipster BMI, not wearing ironic glasses or a terrorist scarf.

When I'm in Seattle, I get stared at because I'm tall and usually doing something striking with my skull, like shaving the hair completely off of it, or dying it a strange color, or sticking metal through various bits of skin. When I'm in Germany, I get stared at because I'm tall and black. When I'm in Eastern Europe I get stared at because gypsies are not supposed to wear pants and what the hell is that for a flip flop?

When I'm on the train I get stared at because I stand a foot higher than the rest of the people on the coach and I'm usually twitching around with inhibition to whatever I'm listening to on my iPod, but when a little person gets stared at, they are stared at for being little and nothing else.

You get stared at walking down the street and standing on the train and sitting on the bus swinging your little person feet over the edge of the seat, and you get stared at while jumping at bananas and apples in the grocery store that you can't quite reach, and you get stared at while looking longingly at the ATM and you get stared at while eating Chinese food with chopsticks and while walking your dog at 2 in the morning or 4 in the afternoon. You get stared at while smoking and while drinking water and while picking out CDs or talking to a friend on the street or looking like you're going anywhere other than to a movie set to perform your role as an extra in a film concerning a circus, or maybe a comedy about Tall people doing things with Smaller people.

And it's not like you get stared at like a celebrity, or that you can pretend in your mind that bitches are staring at you because they wanna be you and that haters gone hate. You know for a fact, one hundred percent, that you are being stared at because of your unnaturally small size. Because of your strange proportions. You know they're wondering what kind of job you could possibly do and what your house looks like. They're wondering if you've ever driven a car or made love to a person of average height and proportions.

Now, the last thing Little People need is any more sympathy, so I'm going to do one a favor next time I see him. Instead of averting my eyes and pretending not to notice that there is a fully grown adult who couldn't see over my kneecaps waddling about in the Fußbahn, I'm going to walk straight up to him, raise my hand way over my head, and go, "High Five!"

And hopefully he has a sense of humor, because that is either the funniest joke ever, or the most insensitive thing you could ever do to a stranger who will probably go home and hang himself now but not until he's kicked you in the shins first.