My past life as a runt

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 six-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 six 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 was a Corona del Mar resident and a judge who died earlier this year. This column originally ran in June of 2000.

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