A Case for the Shorties

In the United States, tall is in.  We like our leggy models and it is not uncommon to hear girls  complain about their height, making us shorties fell like we, well, come up short.  However, for all the other short stacks out there, a sparkle of hope shines south of the border.

Life is much easier for me and my five feet in Guatemala.  For starters, I stand out enough with my light hair and features, I don't need my height to shout out, gringa!  Plus, the country was made for people like me--Guatemalans average around my height.  The benefits of being a short foreigner are most obvious when you use public transportation.  Ride a chicken bus for just twenty minutes, and you'll be wishing you had that same magic powder that shrank Alice, getting her into Wonder Land.

One of Guatemala's cultural hubs sits right inside American's hand-me-downs, altered with a slight face lift. The same yellow buses we rode in elementary school are painted bright reds, blues and greens, adorned on the inside with the clashing images of American children cartoons and a repeated figure colored in black of a barbie-shaped woman, sitting naked with her large breasts sticking up. However, when it comes to one's vertical (and horizontal) size, the most consequential of the bus' transformations are the seats.

Since American school buses are made for young children, it would make sense to replace the seats, but instead, they are changed to create less room rather than more. Why such a counter-intuitive alteration? To fit more people. This may lead to overcapacity and ignoring any safety measures, if there are any.  But most importantly, more people means more money.

The seats are replaced with longer versions to fit three people, creating little room to get by in the aisles.  On busy routes, the buses fill with three people to a seat and the aisles crammed with squished strangers. Those with claustrophobia beware, personal space is of no concern. If you are sitting in the aisle seat, be prepared to have any body parts slam right in front of your face with nowhere else to go. 

While my traveling counterparts, usually tall lanky fellows that can almost hit their heads on the top of the bus' ceiling, usually struggle to fit in the seats on an empty bus, I'm sitting untroubled with the three inches of leg space in front of me. I can even lean back, push my knees forward a bit to rest my head on the back of the seat. Talk about perks. I have decided god made me short so I could travel the world easy-free. I may not be able to reach the top of the cupboard alone, but I can get a step stool to get me to the top. My tall friends will never fit easily in a chicken bus--there is nothing they can do, short of chopping off part of their legs, to change that. For that, I can stand up tall (well, short) and say, I am proud to be a shorty.