Shortest Person Award

In a basketball tournament in a long ago era, I was convinced that this award was due to me. I mean, no one I know can come up quickly with the name of a person shorter than me, in the whole wide world. Children are known to walk up to me and say 'Kenny Maami, how come you are so short?' Some days I wake up thinking that I just look that short, because you know, the husband is so very tall. But then other days, I peep down and see my toes being just a few inches lower than the monsters (assuming that she has condescended to sleep parallel to the rest of the population and not in her usual orthogonal manner). To cut a long story short (and to avoid my usual pastime of going on and on about things that happened twenty years ago), I did not win said award. For what reasons, I will never know. It should rankle more I suppose, but I feel sort of jubilant too. Like I could tell the children 'Hey what do you mean? I am not that short. This guy I went to college with, he is shorter, he even won an award that proves it'

Growing up my parents would gladly have handed me the Shortest Fuse Award. I used to lose my temper fairly frequently - I still do but have managed to work on myself a lot so I really hope that I lose it a lot less now than then. A while ago my husband would say that I let people get away with too much, that I let them all walk all over me and should potentially lose it a bit more. Of course, the exception to the rule is the husband, and now the child. I blow my top at them fairly quickly and it takes immense patience (I don't think its just patience, it requires some sort of superhuman strength, I think) to keep it all in check.

Yesterday was an exercise in such self control. In sequence the things that happened are:

Gas Cylinder ran out.

Replacement Cylinder Leaked.

Monster had to be dropped at Soccer.

Power was cut at home.

I had an email deadline to meet.

I had a meeting to attend.

Gas Cylinder fellow didn't show.

Monster had to be picked back up.

Veggies to be bought.

Gas Cylinder fellow called incessantly on the landline.

Here is where we take a slight walk. The gas company fellow kept asking for my husband. Who is of course in a different continent altogether, hopefully busy shopping for various things such as dryer sheets to satisfy my craving for nice smelling laundry. I kept telling him I am his wife so tell me whats going on. Finally it turned out that Guna, that eloquent fellow at the other end of my irritating land line phone, wanted to suggest that I switch the O-ring from cylinder (old) to cylinder (new) and check the situation out. Which I am quite capable of, despite my being a very short, female person of squeaky voice. I should have lost it. I could have easily, I was sweating profusely, my nice Marks&Spencerspant got muddy from the cylinder, I could have thrown my back out lifting the cylinder in and out of its little cupboard, but I am glad to say, that I did not. "What did you say your name was? Guna? Oh well, Guna, guess what. This is not a big deal but the fact that you would sell a cylinder that has a faulty O-ring is an outrageously bad thing okay?" I said, and slunk back into my corner to play mild-mannered professor-who-cant-reach-the-top-of-the-blackboard.