The Agreeable Shortness of Being

For long I have wondered why I attract so many short jokes. I’m not particularly short. Okay well I am, sort of. But I am the chosen target even when there are shorter people in the vicinity. I think I’m at that optimal height where it’s all right to make short jokes without worrying that I may have some underlying medical condition. Personally, I love short jokes. They are particularly funny when a person of my height cracks them.

Perhaps I’m partly responsible for attracting attention to my height. I can never resist an opportunity to show off the merits of being small. Short people have some remarkable advantages: leg room is never an issue, sleeping on the couch isn’t all that uncomfortable, low-ceilinged rooms are less likely to make us claustrophobic and we are, on average, better limbo dancers.

Beethoven and Picasso were 5’4”, as is Scorsese. As Bill Bryson says in A Short History of Nearly Everything, “The world belongs to the very small – and it has for a very long time.” If anything, short people are more likely to be able to adapt to sudden changes. We do live in the more oxygen-rich part of the atmosphere. We have the choice of being taller by wearing heels or stilts, while tall people can’t be short without undergoing some very unusual surgery. One of the few things economics has successfully taught me is that a larger choice set means better optimisation.