Growing pains
It’s hard being small. Viewed from my lofty balcony, staring at people on the road, they become dwarves too. It makes me feel superior, insulated. The sea breeze calls me. I am impelled to do great things. I stretch my limbs, like a bird – imagining myself as a strong and fearless eagle, soaring to meet life as an equal. When I venture Down There, on the same level (though not at the same level) my differentness asserts itself.
I am never sure whether everybody feels this way about themselves. Pity makes for agony; I meet it with soul-searing indifference. Laughter is kinder. Some joke awkwardly about good things coming in little packages. I know that I am a good thing. I can make a difference.
As a child I was considered cute. As I developed, my parents could not accept my smallness. Mother worried when I started, or rather failed, to grow normally. What is ‘normal’ Mother? Millions of other creatures exist, moving on the earth and in the oceans, living natural lives. Millions are invisible to human eyes. Are they happy? It’s impossible to tell, because we know nothing of their feelings, their emotions. They are as they are, and surely are contented. I am restless and unfulfilled.
My father left us, after my body refused to co-operate. He wanted a rugged, rugger-playing and rough and tumble son, to follow him into the Army. At school, I was not helped to join in sports. I loved to watch the boys playing football and tennis. They felt sorry and called me to play, but the racquets were too heavy. I barely reached the top of the net. My eyes are weak, because I spent most of my time studying. I was still a curiosity, but the interest was friendly. A few good souls kept me company, as I fought my way to the top in school, then in university, scrabbling and scrambling my uphill way, to graduate miles ahead of the rest. Then we arrived in the real world.
All my life I had this desperate desire to teach. I am a born teacher. I yearn to open the minds of young people to life’s riches that can be reached by jumping the gap between unreason and reason. Despite having academic stature, I was always rejected for teaching posts for my lack of height. I cannot secure any regular teaching post. They say the children would laugh at me; a natural reaction, but one that I could surmount. The interview boards blind themselves when I go for interviews, then blindly offer solutions that make me despair. The last board told me ‘Try the Blind School’. They did not say it, but I understood. (They can’t see me). I could see only too well. So I bridged the gap.
Now I give private tuition to the stragglers, the strugglers, the no-hopers, and the downright gifted ones – the oddities who cannot fit into normal systems. What is ‘normal’ Principal? Being alike in our diversity, we relate, and thereby grow.
I don’t need to travel the world. It is difficult even to go in a ‘bus, the stairs are too steep. My pupils come to me to share the knowledge accumulated in my small head. It expands and fills their mind. These young people are gentle and protective of me, even the unruly ones. But I am sad. I may never get married. I say ‘may’ hopefully, as I don’t know where I could find a woman small enough, or one large-hearted enough, for me. There is the unspoken fear of any children of mine becoming like me. You see, even I am biased against the little people of the world. But if all people were the same size as me, and everything else – animals, trees, mountains – was as they are now, I think humans would be much less dangerous.
I stand here, watching the sun sink into the sea, gilding the toy-sized boats. I am grateful for knowledge and the ability to share it; for my apartment, my television and books; my few good friends. That is all anybody can ask. Except that there is always the question that leaps to mind, whenever I accidentally glimpse myself in mirror. I have everything I need, all except height, which equals stature. Why did I stop growing?