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.