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| Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.
"I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days." -Vladimir Putin
Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,
My late wife's grandmother, whom I never met (I've been told this is not necessarily a bad thing) because she was my late wife's, late grandmother by the time I came along...
{There's something really, really wrong with you, you know that, right?}
...is famous for, among other things, advising that one should avoid short men with small feet. She thought that men of diminutive dimensions could not be trusted.
I have no firm opinion to offer as to whether or not encountering a little man with little feet is necessarily indicative of anything, but I have personally known several short gentlemen in my life that, if given the chance, I'd cross the street to avoid encountering.
In my defense, I don't automatically assume that short men, anyone actually, should be avoided based on their physical appearance with the exception of anyone carrying a machete or a machine gun while hanging out at the mall.
I take 'em as I find 'em. I pride myself on attempting to maintain an open mind at all times. I'm willing to interact with anyone, for at least a minute or two, before going to DEFCON 1.
Also, I don't think that most problematic short men are overcompensating for their height, I think they're more likely to be burdened by a shoulder chip that is the result of having been physically bullied by men and psychologically bullied by women as they were coming up.
I once met Dick Goddard "an American television meteorologist, cartoonist, and animal activist." He was the creator of the Cleveland area's world-famous Wollybear (caterpillar) Festival. You may have never heard of him but he's (regionally) famous enough to have his own Wikipedia entry.
{What's that got to do with anything?}
Well, he is, or was (he's now the late Dick Goddard) a very small man with very small feet who was perfectly proportioned from head to toe. This was rather shocking to me because when my late wife and I watched him "do" the weather on Cleveland's channel 8 there was no way to discern his diminutiveness.
{I still don't see what...}
Well, he was as nice in person as he appeared to be on TV. Also, maintaining a reputation as an all-around nice guy in a blue-collar metro area like Cleveland, Ohio — a city wherein a river used to regularly catch on fire that's now knee-deep in rust — would be tough to fake.
This brings us to the Pooteen.
{Who? It does?}
I speak of Vladamir Putin, Dana. Who, it turns out, is a relatively little fella.
He's not even all that short, being either 5'-6" or 5'-7", depending on who ya believe. That's about the same size as America's favorite fighter pilot, Tome Cruise. But I recently saw a picture in which the Pooteen and some of his minions are celebrating annexing a chunk of Ukraine. He looks like he would've been the last kid picked when the other kids were choosing up sides to play basketball.
I don't know his shoe size but I can't help but wonder if Mrs. Pooteen's little Vladdy, who began his working life as a KGB agent and rose through the ranks to become a world-famous brutal and corrupt dicktater, was picked on by the boys and rejected by girls back in the day:
- From Wikipedia, "At age 12, he began to practice sambo and judo. In his free time, he enjoyed reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin."
- He's well known for photo ops in which he appears without his shirt.
- He's also well known for breaking into his neighbor's houses countries, folks who would just like to be left alone to pursue happiness as they define it, and breaking things just because he can.
- Also, he...
{The breadth and depth of your scholarship are truly impressive.}
I'm just sayin'. If it walks like a duck...
Fortunately for his fellow young communists, little Vladdy didn't start killing his enemies, real and imagined, till after he matured, at least as far as we know.
Unfortunately for the planet Earth, little Vladdy is now aging Vladdy; H. sapiens and chimpanzees share a common ancestor; the Pooteen is the boss of a nation with 6,300 nukes, and history seems to bear out the truth of Lord Acton's observation that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Brothers and sisters (and others), let us pray.
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
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