Cutie Patootie

I am 5 ft 2. For the most part, being vertically challenged has served me well. I’ve never hit my head on a door frame, I save money by shopping in the children’s section of fancy stores, and I’ve gotten out of riding roller coasters a few times because I’ve fooled people into thinking I don’t meet the height requirement. But being a pipsqueak has its drawbacks.

There’s a certain level of weirdness and creepiness you have to deal with when you’re petite. I often wonder if I fulfill people’s unmet desires to have a baby or a puppy because I have lost count the number of times random strangers have picked me up and twirled me around screeching, “Omigawd! You’re so little!” And the sad part is, only a fraction of these people was drunk when they did this. I would NEVER in a million years go up to a stranger and pick them up and twirl them around. I don’t even do that to someone’s baby or puppy without at least asking permission first.

Then there’s the cuteness aggression you encounter. Cuteness aggression is when a person sees something that is so adorable their brain can’t process all of the positive emotions and they get a sudden surge to squeeze it or punch it in the face. Most of the time, people don’t actually want to do this, but when you’ve never met someone before and they inform you that you’re so cute they want to punch your lights out, I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little alarming.

When you’re a small fry, you are in constant peril of being called cute. Now, cute might strike you as affectionate or endearing, but you are naive, my friend. Sure, it’s better than being called unappealing or horrifying, but not that much better. Cute is a very loaded word that us shrimps - particularly female shrimps - hear a lot.

When you’re called cute, you’re not taken seriously. Sure, I might be the same size as your pre-teen daughter, but I’m a grown ass woman and if I’m giving you a sales pitch, I want you to listen to it. I wonder how many small-framed doctors have come up with cures for cancer, but nobody listened to them because they were too busy gushing over how big their white coat looked on them.

It’s not uncommon for someone to meet me for the first time and tell me I’m cute within the first 10 minutes of a conversation. By calling me cute, you’re assuming that I’m sweet, cuddly, and good-natured. But how do you know I’m cute? Yes, I’m small, but you know who else is small? A troll. Maybe I’m an evil troll who’s taking a break from her bridge. You may think it’s adorable that I’m only as tall as your waist, but that also puts me in the perfect position to violently head butt your stomach if you piss me off.

So, the next time you meet a small-framed person, please resist the urge to cuddle with or ogle them like a 6-week-old Shar Pei. If your colleague is working on a big project, focus on their project and not that their feet don’t touch the floor when they sit in their chair. And for the love of God please understand none of us want to be picked up and tossed around by you. Ever.

Pickling My Battles

I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I love winning. Ever since I was old enough to know what perfect or winner meant, I strove to be the best at anything I did, and I mean anything. When I was a kid, I was determined to excel at everything from running, baking muffins, creating perfect birthday party grab bags, volunteering with seniors, cursive writing and, of course, school.

My go-getter attitude was so intense that Ms. Dear, one of my grade 12 teachers, felt the need to give me the following end of high school advice: “Jenn, sometimes you just gotta say ‘Fuck It!’” I was stunned. There was an audible gasp in the room because she was a teacher and she swore! What was she talking about? “Jenn, you need to learn to pick your battles. You can’t be perfect at everything. Spend your time wisely.”

I wasn’t pleased. What did she know? She was wrong. I could conquer anything and everything. How dare she tell me what to do! I was going to keep doing what I was doing, and I was going to be just fine, thank you very much.

And expecting the best from myself continued to serve me well. I got into the University I wanted to, I lived in my dream city, and had a career in television. Don’t get me wrong, as I got older trying to succeed at everything made life hectic. I was always rushed and didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted, but I was making things happen.

But on a Wednesday night four years ago, my winning attitude got a little out of hand. I’d come home incredibly frustrated after failing to increase my running speed. For weeks I had tried to get faster but nothing was changing. Normally, I would have trained longer that night, but I had an assignment for work due the next morning and I needed to get cracking on it.

I sat down at my desk to get some work done but was craving a salty snack. A big bag of chips in the kitchen cupboard was calling my name, but in addition to trying to master my running speed, I was also trying to only eat healthy, unprocessed, organic food at all times. So, I opted for some organic dill pickles instead.

I opened the fridge, took out the jar, and twisted the lid. Then I twisted the lid again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t open. Goddamn artisanal organic pickle companies and their stupid sturdy lids. No need to worry. This was nothing that wrapping a rubber dish glove around the lid couldn’t fix. This was something that I had mastered as a kid to shut my family up as they made fun of me when I couldn’t open jars. My nickname growing up was Mr. Burns because I was such a weakling.

But there was a problem. We didn’t have any rubber gloves. We didn’t even have elastic bands. It was time for Plan B: butter knife under the lid. I slid it under and no go. How could I not open this? I was the last one who had closed the jar! Expletives flew out of my mouth like a drunken sailor as I tried to rip off the lid. My housemate heard me in the other room and came out.

“Uh, Jenn, do you need a hand with that?”

“No!” I snapped. “But thanks.”

“I mean, you’ve probably loosened it. Maybe you just need one extra push -.”

“I said I’m fine!”

Ten minutes had passed at this point and I didn’t even want the pickles anymore. I just wanted to open the damn jar. I took it off the counter and tried another angle by pressing it into my stomach and thanks to my death grip I heard a squeak. But it didn’t open. The squeak was from my sneakers skidding across the floor.

My hands were throbbing, my throat was parched, and I needed to take five. The indents on my hands from the lid were so deep it looked like I was bleeding. But that wasn’t going to stop me. I was not going to let that 946 mL jar beat me. I was not Mr. Burns. I was not Mr. Burns so help me God! The smiling cartoon pickle on the label stared up at me mockingly.

“Hey Burnsy, you think you can open me with those toothpick arms? Ha!” The pickle’s voice was my dad’s.

The condensation was making the jar harder and harder to hold, and I had to wrap a tea towel around it so it didn’t fly out of my hands. Half of the wrapper had peeled off, but that smug pickle cartoon was still there.

This was God’s way of punishing me for wanting a snack with so much sodium. My hands were cramping up and I had to throw in the towel. I put it back in the fridge and soaked my hands in hot water. It was official: I was Mr. Burns.

Defeated and pissed off, I sulked back to my room to get my work done. The bright white of the blank Word document burned through my tired eyeballs as I tried to formulate a sentence for my assignment. All I could picture was that cartoon pickle in the fridge. Screw it.

I leapt up, made a beeline for the kitchen and whipped out the jar. The lid gave me grief again, but I persisted. Just push through the pain. You are not Mr. Burns. You are not Mr. Burns!

Hallelujah! With a loud watery pop the lid flew off and pickle juice went everywhere. Victory was mine! I slammed the jar onto the table, grabbed a fork, and dug in. Breathlessly, I devoured it and while taking a pause to enjoy it, I saw the mayhem that was my kitchen. It looked like we had been burgled. Drawers were open; cutlery and towels were strewn about; cupboards were open; and chairs were in every direction. Then I looked at the clock. I had battled a pickle jar for 64 minutes. I had mountains of work to do and I was going to be up all night because of a pickle jar.

How was this possible? Sixty-four minutes? I put the kitchen back together and reassessed all the battles I’d fought that day. In the morning I had obsessed over squeezing every last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, at lunch I was in a store and spent way too much time trying to reach something that my 5’2” frame clearly couldn’t reach, and now I had just lost 64 minutes of my life to fermented vegetables. No wonder I was always flustered and exhausted. Ms. Dear was right, I needed to spend my time wisely.

In the wee hours of the morning, I finished my assignment, but before I went to bed, I looked at my day-planner. It looked like I had written a novel. Half of the stuff I didn’t even want to do. I just wanted to prove to myself (and let’s face it, others) that I could do it all. Things needed to change. So, I took my red pen and crossed things out to my heart’s content.

Slowly but surely, I got used to picking my battles. I still catch myself once in a while doing things like focusing too much on making all of my laundry fit into one dryer, packing all the food into one Tupperware container, and wrapping and re-wrapping Christmas presents until there isn’t a single crease in the paper. But things have definitely improved. It’s nice to let go, give yourself a break, and have some breathing room in your life.

I didn’t touch that pickle jar again until a few years later during a mammoth fridge clean out. The lid came off easily, but the pickles had expired.

Every Cyclist is Clearly in Love with Me

Some women have the remarkable ability to instantly recognize when someone is hitting on them. I am not one of these women. Unless someone pulls a Love Actually moment on me and reads cards that say “I am very interested in you! Let’s date!”outside my door, I cannot tell for the life of me whether or not someone is interested in me. But one autumn morning a few years back while I waited for the Queen and Dufferin streetcar, I saw some very handsome cyclists who appeared to be checking me out at the stoplight.

Allow me to set the scene for you. Queen and Dufferin is part of a very hip neighbourhood in Toronto where everyone has dewy skin, fashionable clothes, and somehow manages to look waifish, yet toned and healthy at the same time. I, however, did not look so fashionable and was usually bare-faced, in my crappy work clothes, and wearing my hair in a messy ponytail. As per usual, I cowered away from the fashionable crowd so they wouldn’t notice me, and as I moved away, I looked up and saw a cyclist with chestnut locks, gorgeous green eyes and a lumberjack bearded face staring at me. I called him Cyclist #1.

I stood like a deer in the headlights before immediately turning away to sit on a bench to collect myself. I was delusional. There was no way someone that hip and good-looking would ever check me out. I got up and coyly looked over my shoulder, but he was gone. Then as I walked onto the streetcar another hot cyclist at the stoplight turned around to check me out. What the hell was happening? Was I living in an alternate universe? I never got this kind of attention. Ever.

I got on the streetcar and processed the situation. It must have been a fluke. Maybe it was a full moon. Maybe they were assessing my hideous, outdated outfit.

“You are not crazy! They’re totally into you,” my friend Marcia said as we rolled cutlery at the restaurant where we both worked. “If you see them again you should ask them out!”

“I dunno. I never know when it comes to this kind of stuff. Maybe they were looking at someone near me?”

“No! They were totally checking you out. You need to have more confidence and put yourself out there. Go with your gut if you think someone is interested in you. C’mon, how many times have you been interested in someone and you’ve never said anything to them? Guys do that too. Assume, just for once, that someone is into you.”

Maybe she was right. I never made the first move when it came to dating. Guys can be shy too, so maybe they were actually interested in me. I had just moved into a new place after a really tough break-up, so maybe it was time for a new, more assertive Jenn. I’d also watched Brene Brown’s TED talk about being brave and vulnerable, and I’d been looking for an excuse to test it out.

I walked home from my shift that afternoon wanting to believe Marcia, but completely dismissed it. What had happened was a once in a lifetime occurrence. But lo and behold, within minutes of me stopping at the red light a cyclist had turned around to look at me. And so did another one.

It wasn’t a fluke. By the end of the walk five more cyclists had checked me out, and all my shyness was gone. I was on Cloud 9 strutting my stuff. This is what the popular girls in high school must have felt like! I flipped my hair back in the wind and sashayed all the way home. I was hot stuff and I was totally ready to make the first move…. At a later date. I wanted to soak up as much of this newfound attention that I could. So, for the next few days, I let hot hipsters on fixed gear bikes ogle me.

It had been so long since I’d been this happy and confident. I was doing really well at work and for the first time since my break-up, I wasn’t thinking about how devastated I was. After almost a week of being cyclist eye-candy, I decided it was time to make a move. I sauntered out the door to Beyonce’s “Run the World” and waited for a hot cyclist to come my way. Then Cyclist #1 appeared!

His blue helmet shone so brightly in the sun it practically blinded me and in the slowest of slow motion he turned his enchanting face my way. With every step I took towards him my smile grew wider and wider; however, with every step I took towards him, his smile grew smaller and smaller. I stood next to him within an inch of his face and he was totally creeped out and confused.

Huh? What? Why doesn’t he like this, I thought. “Um…I… Hi?” I squeaked. He stared at me completely perplexed that a non-hipster had the nerve to speak to him. I looked around frantically trying to think of something to say when I saw the wedding ring on his hand. Then I saw the wedding ring on the perfect, petite hand of the beautiful woman in front of him. She looked confused, creeped out and like she wanted to kill me in my sleep.

I looked around at all the other cyclists. Everyone on their bike was looking at the person behind them. And at the person in front of them. And at the people on either side of them. Cyclists hadn’t been checking me out. They were checking to make sure it was safe to go when the light turned green!

How could I have been that stupid? Why hadn’t I realized this sooner? Okay, don’t panic. Maybe Cyclist #1 was the exception. But judging by his facial expression it didn’t look like this was the case. “I… I… Sorry. I thought you were someone else.” I awkwardly laughed and stepped back. He gave me a laboured smile and peddled away faster than a doped-up Lance Armstrong.

So, that was my first foray into being assertive with men. Completely mortified at how delusional I’d been, I quickly reverted back to assuming that every interaction with the opposite sex was strictly platonic. Marcia thought I was going overboard and insisted that I keep trying, but the thought of living alone for the rest of my life with rescue dogs didn’t seem all that bad.

One evening the following summer, I was waiting for the streetcar and it looked like a really cute guy on a bike was checking me out.

No Jennifer! Stay away from the cyclist. Remember what happened last time? You just move over to that bench and wait for the streetcar.

But maybe he was interested. I wouldn’t know unless I gave it a chance. I turned around but he was gone.

The swirling pinks and purples of the sunset distracted me from feeling sorry for myself and how long the streetcar was taking. I took out my phone to take a picture when I heard, “Dayum girl!” A 70-something homeless man on a ramshackle bike looked me up and down. “Dayum girl, you look great.” He blew me a kiss and peddled away.

Well, at least one cyclist was in love with me.