Now imagine being only 34 inches tall like actor Gabriel Pimental,
on the left here:

As he once put it: “Every little thing that people take for granted
is a workout for me. If I want to get something from a cabinet, I have
to hop up onto a chair and then onto the counter like a monkey. When I’m in an elevator, I have to jump as high as I can to
hit the button if I’m going to a high floor.”

How does the world seem when you’re an adult yet the height of a 2 yr old?

Check out the two dwarfs on the left of this pic. They look like they’re 7 yr old boys, yet are adult

And here’s a slim 4’11” guy—rather petite. For him, tabletops, doorknobs, light switches—and stuff on shelves—seems much higher.

>>that could only have come from the children’s department

Imagine knowing when you walk into a store that nothing in the men’s department will fit you, because even the smallest waist/
shortest inseam is too big. Even a “men’s small” shirt might seem too loose on you.

If I saw a little guy in a crowd straining to see because bigger people were in front of him, I’d move aside and try to let him get in front so he could see.

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oops forgot pic

I’m 5’9” and 290 pounnds but would love being his size—or being my size and next to him

shrink myself story, clickable link

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There’s a disease called osteogenesis imperfecta, a/k/a “brittle bone disease.” It’s present at birth, and people with it don’t grow more than a couple of feet tall. Usually they have to use wheelchairs because their bones couldn’t support their weight if they tried to stand up. I’ve known two people with it. The shortest non-disabled adult male I’ve known was a friend in grad school. He was probably about 4’8”, but had a full beard and a very deep voice. I saw a picture of him with his parents and brother, and they were all about the same height.

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Reply to Shrinkingman,

Yes, that was my story – fiction of course. However the encounter I described in the previous post actually happened. They guy in the bookstore was probably the 2nd smallest man I have ever seen. Way back when I was a student at a large state university I saw another guy who was even shorter. I waited behind him in line at a ATM and he didn’t even come up to my chest, no more than 4-5 with his shoes on. He was with a couple of much taller buddies who might have been his roommates and he was wearing a shirt with the university logo, so he was clearly a college student. But he looked physically immature enough that he might still have been growing. I saw him around campus from time to time after that — I think he lived in a dorm near the house where I lived as an upperclassman. Towards the end of my senior year I passed him coming out of the library. He was a little taller by then – 2 years later — but not much, maybe 4-7. And he looked more mature, like he might finally be done growing.

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I would never be so rude as to ask a stranger how tall they are or make then uncomfortable by staring or snapping a picture. But given my interest in the subject I’m a pretty good judge of height. As a clarification, I’ve seen dwarfs who were shorter than the two men I have described in the previous posts, but those two were the shortest normally proportioned men I have ever encountered. The next closest was a young man about 4’10” who worked in the same office building. I used to see him on the elevator and he was almost always the shortest person in the cab, male or female. He was slightly built too, similar to the 4-11 guy in the picture Shrinkingman posted. It must have been tough for him crammed in with all of those taller bodies, reminding him of how short he was.

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Thanks for that info…speaking of perfectly proportioned dwarfs: the majority of little people are achondroplastic—big head and torso, small arms or legs. That’s genetic. But “proportional” dwarfs are often that was because the pituitary gland doesn’t work right, doesn’t put out enough hormones etc. Eddie Gaedel (3’7”, 63 pounds) was the
“baseball midget” who came up to the plate once for the old St. Louis Browns. He was proportional. So was Dick Beals (4’7”,68 pounds) the voice of Speedy Alka Seltzer (and many cartoon characters)...and in his situation he never went through puberty so he looked child-like.

And here’s Mr and Mrs. Jerry Maren; Jerry was one of the “Lollipop Guild” in The Wizard of Oz (3’6” at the time). He’s posing with his wife Elizabeth, another proportional, next to a statue of Judy Garland (who at 4’11” or so was fairly short herself). Later—in his late 20s!—Jerry would grow to 4’3”. Supposedly growth hormones can be given, these days, to give some additional height to pituitary dwarfs, but it doesn’t always work and could be a cancer risk. (Jerry’s wife died last January)

pic

Jerry used to also run around the stage at the end of “Gong Show” episodes (70s), throwing confetti

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Reading the posts on this thread, including my earlier one, has sparked memories of other very short men I have seen over the years. My earliest recollection of an unusually short man was the principal of my grade school. He was barely eye level with most of the sixth graders, and shorter than some, including me. He was shorter than any of the teachers, who were mostly women. At that age I don’t think I fully appreciated just how unusually short he was. If anything, we kids thought it was sort of cool to have an authority figure who wore a suit and tie everyday down at our level. But I remember realizing how short he was when I came back to visit the school a couple of years later and ran into the principal in the hall. I was in junior high, probably 5-7 by then, and already I towered over him. I remember thinking how weird it was to see a grown man’s head so far down, like a little boy.

+++

The next memorably short guy I remember was a kid in my high school, named Anthony. I didn’t know him – he had gone to a different junior high and we weren’t in any classes together. But I sure noticed him. By that age I was becoming more aware of my interest in height difference. And Anthony was cute. He was a wrestler, with a wiry frame, but well muscled. Even as a senior, however, he still wrestled in the lightest weight category, which back then was 98 lbs. I suspect he had no trouble making weight. He was so tiny that he was probably closer to 90 lbs, notwithstanding his well-developed muscles. Incidentally, the lightest high school wrestling division was later upgraded to 103 lbs, and again recently to 106, possibly reflecting the fact that teenagers are maturing earlier now.

Delayed maturity was not the cause of Anthony’s diminutive stature, however. He was a dark haired Italian guy, and even our first year in high school he already had a pronounced beard shadow and a hairy chest. There were a few very short freshman and sophomore guys who were close to Anthony’s size, but they were obviously late maturing boys who looked much younger than he did. By senior year every other guy in our class towered over Anthony. So did most of the girls. Anthony’s girlfriend sat next to me in Spanish class. She was petite, barely up to my shoulder when she wore flats, but she was taller than Anthony. I saw them smooching once in the hallway between classes, sort of looking out of the sides of their eyes the way teenagers do, making sure they were being noticed. The girlfriend was wearing tall shoes that day and Anthony had to stretch up on his toes to reach her lips. It was pretty amusing.

For graduation the seniors were lined up by height, instead of alphabetically; the tallest boy, followed by the tallest girl, then the next tallest boy and the next tallest girl, and so on. I’m not making this up. Looking back I realize how weird it was – maybe someone in the administration had a height fetish. But at the time I didn’t think much of it. The explanation given to us at rehearsal was that because the downtown auditorium where the graduation ceremony was held each year had a steeply sloping isle, having us lined up by height made it better for the photographer to shoot pictures as we progressed into the auditorium in our caps and gowns. Being six feet tall, I was much closer to the front of the line, than the back, although there were a number of guys in front of me, including many of the members of the football and basketball teams. Little Anthony was way back at the rear of the line, behind even the shortest girls. One of the girls ahead of Anthony in line was a friend of mine, and I happen to know that she was 4-10. We took Driver’s Ed together and joked about the fact that the instructor made her sit on a cushion when she drove. Anthony was shorter than she was, and I don’t think it was simply her heels. He was really that small. I doubt that he was taller than 4-8. I’m pretty sure Anthony was embarrassed at being at the back of the line – I remember some of his buddies teasing him about it during rehearsal. It was cruel of the administration to call attention to his height by lining us up that way – cruel for the tall girls at the front of the line too.

I ran into Anthony once at the local K-Mart a couple of years later. I was home from college for the summer and had gone into the K-Mart because it was the cheapest place in town to buy parts for the hand-me-down car that I drove (replacement wiper blades, I think). Anthony was working there as a shelf stocker. He was standing on a wooden palate between two of the isles, unpacking boxes, and he was wearing a pair of the platform shoes that were popular when we were in high school (think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever). They were going out of style by then – thank goodness — but I suspect Anthony kept his because of the boost they gave to his stature. The combination of the elevated palate and Anthony’s “disco” shoes probably added 7 inches to his height. And I was wearing flat soled sandals. But even with the advantage of the palette and Anthony’s tall shoes, I still looked way down at him. I remember thinking that he looked even smaller than I remembered, but still just as cute. The top of his head was level with my chin. I don’t think Anthony went to college. I wonder what happened to him, and whether he ended up stuck in a low-paying job because of height discrimination. With the combination of his diminutive size and athleticism, he would have made a good jockey.

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