Let's Keep This Short...One Man's Tall Tale

It seems that more and more people these days have met at least one person of the opposite sex via computer, wouldn’t you agree? At least that's how it seemed in my line of work at the time, (I was a video game animator) a job that happened to embrace geekdom like a warm comfy blanket in a cold, cruel sea of players and gold diggers.

Anyway... I happened to be out with a group of my co-worker friends for a few drinks one night, when we got onto the subject of computer dating services. It seemed a few of the men at the table had met women online with rather varying degrees of success. But one story rose above the rest, and I'd like to share it with you.

To quote Jack, "It was not to protect my identity that I set up a free web page -- The service I chose already provides anonymity - but as a means to do something no one else was doing, setting myself apart. It also allowed me to do some graphical layout of the "ad", as well as add/remove pictures and text at will. Call it showing off if you will! :)" He also wrote up a cute intro. letter along with his list of requirements and the brief description the service provides, and was on his way. It takes a lot of time and care when you create a decent web page. I saw what he put together, and it was very witty. He did read a pile of women’s ads, and decided to respond to... five. Out of all the ads he read, he was rather disappointed to find that essentially most women specified a desired male height to be on average about six inches taller than they were. As Jack tops off at 5’5", he was pretty much ruled out in almost every ad. I liken it to searching for an apartment in the city, even though you have, say, twelve cats. He told me he felt that if these women were that superficial, (I mean - it is L.A.), that if a man’s character has to come second to uncontrollable appearance traits, then, he would have no interest in them anyway. Of the five ads that Jack responded to, only one women was polite enough to respond.

It reminds me of a study shown on Dateline a few month back, where essentially the scenario was like a police line up, which consisted of four tall men, 6 feet-ish big & strong blue collar workers, and the token short guy, whom they described as a surgeon, a gourmet chef, who loves kids, owns his own home, etc. You get the picture... Not one single woman they brought through (to peep through the two-way glass) picked the shorter guy - Dateline switched between three, who ranged anywhere from 5’2" to 5’6". When they tossed in the fact that the shorter fellow was also a millionaire, a few girls began to cave. Just watching this show, I started to feel like a heel. How frustrating it must be not to be able to change something so detrimental to your possible happiness!

See, I don’t really notice it much, as I’m lucky if I top off at 5’3" on a good day. I can safely say I've never been rejected based on my height. I can just imagine how frustrating that must be. It is hard for me to comment on the fact that height shouldn’t mean anything in a real, healthy relationship, as any man I've dated has been taller.

So has this been going on since the dawn of time? Have shorter men always gotten the short end of the stick? Are they destined to be the last guys picked for the team, until women who have been tossed around by taller, perhaps, less caring men, wake up one day and finally realize the worth of these height challenged but healthy, intelligent, kind, caring men who are everywhere, but overlooked by gals because our heels and expectations are too high? I hope not.

Update: Fooling around in chat one night, Jack found a woman who needed his programming expertise, which he was happy to offer, and when he jokingly asked her what she had to trade, she offered him her sister. Okay...Well, that seemed to work out just fine, as Jack just recently returned from a trip to the Midwest, to visit the "sister", who by the way, happens to be crazy about him. Ha!

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