The Verdict -- Robert Gardner
For much of my youth, I was a runt and, take it from me, being a runt
is no fun.
Perhaps I should clarify something: There is a distinction between a
runt and a dwarf. A dwarf is born and dies a dwarf. A runt is the word
used to describe someone who at sometime in his or her career is
seriously under the size of others of his or her age. I was a runt.
When I was very young, there was a worldwide epidemic of something
called the Spanish influenza or, in common usage, the flu. It was a
devastating pandemic with something like 22 million deaths worldwide.
I guess its germs were carried by the wind because, in Wyoming,
sheepherders who had no contact with another human being for virtually
years came down with it.
I was 8, and we were living in Green River, Wyo., when I had the flu.
My Aunt Charlotte was the town doctor when I came down with Spanish
influenza, chicken pox, pneumonia and something else, all at the same
time. Aunt Charlotte had a great bedside manner. She would stand there
shaking her head and say, “Robert, I simply can’t understand it. People
are dying all over town who aren’t half as sick as you are.”
Despite this encouragement, I recovered from all four illnesses, but I
stopped growing. I was a runt to the extent that, when the time came to
go to college, I was so small in comparison with the other kids that my
mother kept me out of college “for fear you might get stepped on.”
I’ll never forget those years as a runt.
Girls? Forget about it. They weren’t interested in someone a head
shorter. Or someone who was still on the class C swimming and water polo
teams.
I remember one time when I was a senior. At the end of the year, they
were giving out of letters for athletic achievement. They called my name,
and I proudly marched across the stage to get my 6-inch letter (varsity
players got 12-inch letters). As I walked across the stage, a female
voice screamed out, “Oh, it’s little Bobby Blue Eyes.”
I have suffered embarrassment quite often in my life, but that was the
worst.
Fortuitously, during that year my mother kept me out, I grew up to my
present 6 feet. It didn’t make me an Adonis. I resembled Ichabod Crane
rather than Charles Atlas, but at least I was no longer a runt.
There is a saying: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and believe me,
rich is better.”
Well, I’ve been “normal” and I’ve been a runt and, believe me, normal
is better.
* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His
column runs Tuesdays.
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