A candid shot of me taken recently revealed the reality of my body: my spine looks like a tree branch caught in 35 mph winds at any given time. My posture, in congruence with many other aspects of this fickle and merciless life, is garbage.
So now at the age of twenty years old, just when I thought I was entering into a stern yet functional business relationship with my body, I stand corrected. In a change of events smacking of pubescent discomfort, I must reconcile my weirdness with my height. I won’t be discouraged: It’s time to embrace my existence as One Long Boi™ at a whopping five foot eight and 3/4 inches!!!!
This may not sound very tall in a day and age where every Jim, Todd, and Trevor is listing their height as 6′ in their Tinder bio. But numbers don’t matter when most of your friends have to look up a little bit to look at you and you have to sink deeply into your desk chair during class so that others can see the board. You feel every centimeter of your 5’8.75″ when you are struggling to cross your legs within the limited confines of an economy class seat on a plane and end up awkwardly kicking the chair in front of you. I do not like kicking chairs! It is jarring to the people sitting in them and now I’m making apologies before the flight has even taken off.
These experiences have made me sheepish. But I didn’t choose to be this lanky! A body is a body is a body and they are all great! I make myself as small as I can, and it’s snapping my spine like a glow stick. I do declare, I shall slump no more. Here is my fail-proof plan to reach peace with my height:
Step One to Accepting Myself: Configure a mood board of inspiration for my body type:
Step Two to Accepting Myself: Perfect. I feel my spine erecting itself with each of those images. You can probably guess the next logical step. It involves buying a pair of moon shoes as a socially acceptable pair of stilts and wearing them everywhere. This is me pushing my limits of how far my head can be off the ground without wanting to run to my room and hide under a pile of dirty laundry. Plus, moon shoes. This is me having fun!
Step 3 to Accepting Myself: Lay all 68.75 inches of my noodle body down and sip some lightly sweetened jasmine tea because standing up straight and Working on Myself™ is tough, my doodz.
Step 4 to Accepting Myself: Repeat number 3 because that comfy comf time slaps so hard.
Step 5 to Accepting Myself: Watch videos of giraffes being born because hey, at least I’m not as awkward as these baby giraffes trying to stand up while slipping in their own birth fluid.
http:/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nt8KpVDjNs
Step 6 to Accepting Myself: Enough leisure. Time to get to business and work on posture. Try to balance books on top of my head while walking like a Southern debutante in an etiquette class. When the books inevitably fall, opening up to a particularly interesting chapter, start reading. Get drawn into the book and escape into the warm confines of storytelling. Spend three days immersed in the bliss of reading a trilogy about young robot cows trying to make it out of their rural hometowns to become novelists based in the Big Ol’ Crunchy Apply (NYC).
Step 7 To Accepting Myself: Become inspired by these brave fictitious cyborg cows. Abandon the quest to reconcile with my height and do what anyone with an internal problem too large to solve does: Become a writer. Write an avant-garde Rib post about the experience with a meta ending.
