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As a man of only 5 foot 7...if you're rounding up... from just under 5 foot 6, I have had to cope with the prejudices and difficulties of being a short man. Too tall to be able to call it a disability, but short enough to be rejected by 95% of women on a dating app.
I come from a long line of short, stocky Irishmen and think my ancestors might have been small enough to have been responsible for the myth of the leprechaun. I have a feeling in my bones that my forebears lived in a bog, rejected by their compatriots for their freakish broadness and shortness. My grandad Hannan was even shorter than me, though I do owe him my fine head of hair. He was like a Middlesbrough Don King adding a valuable three inches to his length in hair alone.
Thankfully I have married a tall woman and her genes are strong and I don't think I have passed on my cursed stature to my kids, who seem to be skewing long and thin rather than stocky and short.
I always felt I had the body of a taller man and that it was just my tiny legs that left me struggling to see over hedges. And that has been proven very effectively by the recent revelation that my daughter, who is still several inches shorter than me (as you'd expect given that she is 10), already has legs that are the same length as mine. I am not exaggerating for comedy effect. Put our legs next to each other and they are a match, but my torso is way bigger than hers (in every direction). If only my legs had grown properly, not only would I be able to buy jeans off the peg, but I would be the height of a normal man. Maybe even a tall man. They should be at least 6 inches longer and I should be 6 feet tall. And think how different my life would have been then. I certainly wouldn't have had to be a fucking comedian. I could have been a gigolo.
Six inches on your height or six inches on your cock - which would you choose (whether you have a cock or not)? I'd definitely go for the legs. No one needs an eighteen inch cock.
I am sure BMI doesn't take into account this disparity. 6 extra inches of leg wouldn't weigh much and so I am being judged against people with torsos the same size as mine, but legs that are much longer.
Damn my leprechaun legs.
As I fell asleep I wondered if science will ever be able to fix my problem. If they can make mice with mammoth DNA then surely they can edit whatever bit of my DNA determined my leg length and give me a bit more so I get to live the life of a taller man.
And then I thought that out of all the vice versa films they've done, there's never been one where a tall man and a short man swap bodies and get to see each other's perspective. And the reason they've never done it is because being tall is clearly better and the short man in the tall man's body would do everything he could to never go back. We short guys have to work on our personalities in a way that tall men don't have to bother with because women want them regardless. Imagine the personality of a short man in the body of a tall man. He'd be the greatest man who ever lived.
I don't actually mind being short. I just really, really, really, really wish I was tall. That's all.
RHLSTP is returning to Sheffield on 5th July as part of the Crossed Wires Podcast festival.
Book tickets here 
