He was a short man (he would grant anyone that) but he would die before he would admit to any of the symptoms of “short man’s syndrome”, that most annoying of afflictions which (he had always been informed by others) likely meant that he was a confrontational asshat.
So he proceeded through his days counting to ten before replying when he was annoyed or angry, purposefully adopting non-confrontational postures when interacting with tall men and women, and generally maintaining a vigilant watch over his own character and actions in order to stockpile the necesssary evidence with which he could defend himself from any such charge that he might, at some point, hypothetically face.
She was a woman generally described by those who knew her best as “striking” rather than “beautiful”; a woman who found that once she had achieved her late twenties, everyone she met somehow assumed that she was married even though she wore a simple ring with a piece of amber in it on the ring finger of her left hand.
She amused herself for hours sitting in bars that catered mostly to men who actually had a sense of right and wrong, watching different guys struggle internally all night, their desire to approach her stalemated by their inexplicable conviction that she was already married.
He met her in line at the supermarket, struck by her beauty and emboldened by her unique ring. “That’s quite a lovely bit of amber you have there,” he offered up, fortuitously just as she was turning her head slightly toward him to read a particular tabloid headline.
“Thanks, I’ve had it forever...are you a collector?”
“No, but I have seen Jurassic Park at least three times, although only once was of my own volition...that scene with the kid surviving the jolt from the electric fence makes me break out in hives.”
She was smiling as she loaded groceries onto the back end of the check-out conveyor belt, and glanced back as he finished his facetious remarks; she was half-surprised and wholly impressed to see that his eyes were meeting hers and not sliding greasily around her body as she stretched and leaned to pick things from the bottom of the cart.
“You shouldn’t watch the second one then...and definitely not the third one,” she replied, continuing to meet his gaze as all her groceries were slowly processed, bagged and re-carted. He was a little short for her, she thought, but there was something in his manner that made her decide, in that moment, to give him a chance.
“I’ll tell you what...give me your number and I’ll call you when I rent them, and you can tell me when the horrendously stupid parts are coming up, and I’ll...cover my eyes or something.”
She flicked a business card out of her wallet as she replaced her debit card, flipped it over smoothly and wrote her cell phone number on the back with the pen chained to the ATM pad. “I’ll tell you what...call me before you rent a movie, and I’ll help you pick out one that’s worth watching, how about that?”
“It’s a deal,” he said, and as he watched her push her freshly bagged food toward the exit he felt a little lighter, as if the process of vigilant watchfulness and effort had left him a finished personality that he could relax into now, not waiting anymore for accusations of being any certain way, but just being himself.
It felt good...it felt very good.
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