Death Struggle Near the Bottom of the Height Pool

As regular readers of Red State Impressions probably know, the beautiful Miss Teen RSI has been severely height-challenged all her life. When she was two and three years old, I would take her in for annual check-ups and I could see that her height wasn't even making the low end of the growth charts. I was always touched that kind-hearted nurses would fudge the numbers to make me feel better. But my daughter was short, short, short.

And it wasn't all the cigarettes we had her smoke as a baby either. Miss Teen just has short genes. Mrs. RSI is only 5' 2 1/2" inches and Grandma Marlene is barely 5'2." Once when Miss Teen was about seven, I explained to Miss Teen why she was doomed to a Randy Newman life by having Mrs. RSI and Grandma Marlene stand together.

But denial was strong. Miss Teen still felt like she was going to have the big growth spurt that would get her up to 5'5."

Fortunately for Miss Teen, her best friend E-Teen is even shorter than she is. Because Miss Teen hit puberty relatively early, she had a little growth spurt that got her up to 5'0." This was the height of her dad's ambitions for Miss Teen and I'll always been grateful to the gods of genetics for letting Miss Teen get to five feet. But now that E-Teen has hit puberty herself, she's been catching up and looked like she was getting ahead when she wore the right shoes and had the right hair-style.

But yesterday, Miss Teen and E-Teen had the short girls version of the shoot-out at the OK corral when they stepped on the scales with their other friends watching. The competition was tough and the results had to be verified several times. Personally, I'm just glad that blood wasn't spilled.

However, it turns out that Miss Teen is still one "silly centimeter" taller than her rival. Congratulations to Miss Teen. She always had it in her.