Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 61

Decades ago Randy Newman recorded a song named “Short People” that ended up on many greatest-hits albums. The song was a sarcastic poke at all people whose prejudice against others is based on external things like gender or race or size.

A “eureka” moment on the importance of height came early in my professional life. I was invited to participate on a panel with three cancer research scientists and physicians of renown. I had good reason to feel more than a little insecure. As we mounted the stage and prepared to sit in our chairs, in a split second I couldn’t help but make the observation that I was the tallest of the four! Something clicked inside me that day: bigger, faster, and stronger may have ruled in Neanderthal times, but in our day what is between the ears counts more.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., great intellectual, medical reformer, and poet stood “five feet three inches when standing in a pair of substantial boots.” The story is told that once he attended a meeting in which he was the shortest man present. “Dr. Holmes,” one man quipped, “I should think you’d feel rather small among us big fellows.” “I do,” retorted Holmes. “I feel like a dime among a bunch of pennies.”

Lloyd George, orator, champion of the underdog and British Prime Minister during World War I, was once introduced with the remark: “I had expected to find Mr. Lloyd George a big man in every sense, but you see he is quite small in stature.” “In North Wales,” Lloyd George countered at the beginning of his speech, “we measure a man from his chin up. You evidently measure from his chin down.”

Height matters. Experiments show that taller men, like women of beauty, have some advantages in life, especially in making good first impressions. Over the long term, however, thoughts and deeds wear better.