By Vicki Hughes         Posted March 22, 2013

Did you know that women are more prone to lie about their height than their weight? I’m not sure it’s intentional, I think it may be due to shrinkage. Maybe we have our height measured at age 21, get our top score, and then gravity slowly begins to screw us over. I mean, really, once they measure you at your high score, you never really think about it again because you don’t expect it to change. It’s like arms. You have two, and you don’t concern yourself with counting them every day to see if you have new ones sprouting. Our height seems to be static, but it’s all a lie!

Unlike our weight, which I am sorry to say has nearly unlimited potential, our height peaks and then begins to decline. For most of my life I have believed I was 5’10”. I’m tall. I’ve always been tall. I am the person who other people expect to change lightbulbs and hand them things off of high shelves. I’m not Women’s NBA tall, but among the women I know, there are very few who make me feel short.

Recently I went in for an annual checkup, which is more like my five year checkup, since I’m a procrastinator. I’ve been on Weight Watchers a little over a year and hovering within five pounds of my goal weight, so for the first time in a long while, the nurse asking me to step on the scale didn’t feel like a mini-execution.

She weighed me and I smiled in quiet smugness. Then she measured my height and said, “Five foot seven and a half.” I thought to myself, “Oh, you are? I’m five-foot-ten.” But then I realized she was writing it in my permanent record! Wait! I‘m not five-foot-seven-and-a-half!

If I am five-foot-seven-and-a-half, that is very bad news for my mom, who peaked at 5’2” sometime in the 1960’s. If gravity is having it’s evil way with her, as it is with me, she’s currently bordering somewhere between pixie and gnome territory.

I have been thinking she looks small to me. Or small-er. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird. When I get a headache, if I ask her for some aspirin, she always asks me, “Do you want one or two?” This prompts me to roll my eyes as I patiently reply, “Two.”

Never has any headache of mine been anything other than amused by one aspirin. I might as well swallow a button for all the relief I’d get from one aspirin.

Newsflash! People who are barely big enough to be allowed in the front seat of a vehicle can take one aspirin, and get relief! It does make sense. I’m sure linebackers for the Green Bay Packers need more than two to get the job done.

Excuse me, I need to get on www.Zappos.com now and buy some heels.

© Vicki Hughes 2013