All right, Ann Landers and Dear Abby, Billy Crystal, Liz Taylor, Donna Sha-la-la, Redford and Newman and all the other short people of the world, stand up and applaud the newest findings of an article in the U.S. News and World Report.
Oh, you are standing. Well, sit down and listen to this. The bottom line is that humans are growing too tall for their own good. It is predicted by a San Diego researcher, Thomas T. Samaras, that if Americans keep growing at the same rate as they have for the past 75 years, they will devastate the environment.He says excess height will increase energy needs by 50 percent, require an additional 180 million acres for food production, and pump 3 billion extra tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Each year, our population seems to get taller and taller. (Unless it's a blind date, and the men are always shorter than the women and the women are always taller than the men.)
It brings to mind the commercial by Shaq O'Neal in a futuristic bit where he is telling a young audience about how basketball has changed since he played the game. The basket kept getting higher and higher to accommodate the height of the players, but now it was really tough because the hoop rotated.
I am 5-foot-2. I use little oxygen and little space. Yet my feet don't touch the floor when I sit in an airline seat. I can't reach the top of grocery shelves. When my foot reaches the gas pedal, there is an indentation of the steering wheel in my stomach. I use a child's drinking fountain. After I have a jacket sleeve shortened, I have enough left over for a coat. For years, I have been admonished for being a shrimp. Now it seems short people are destined to save the planet.
How did the current population get so tall? Good diets and the availability of food. When you think about it, Americans eat every minute they are awake. They eat at sports events, in theaters, on the job, on the streets, in their cars, on trains and planes, before dinner, after dinner, and at fast-food emporiums on every corner.
It's weird to imagine, but these findings may change the images we have always projected. We'll be telling our sons, "Put down that Twinkie; do you want to grow up to be 6 feet tall like your father?" Or we'll warn our daughters, "Get off the dime, or all the short guys will be gone for prom."
Samaras recommends an average height of 5 feet and a weight of about 110 pounds. It's hard to imagine a planet full of gymnasts and not one 7-foot center.