Vinnie: The Vignette

It was either the shrimp or the clams. And seeing as Vinnie was feeling every bit of his 5' 0" stature, he chose the clams. No ma’am, no shrimp for Vinnie. No pint-sized beverages. No small fries. No finger sandwiches. And certainly no cocktail wieners, either. He was a grown man. Couldn’t she see that? He would have shown her too.

"I’ll have the clams."

He pulled his chin back a bit while he talked and dropped his Adam’s apple as far down his throat as he could manage without swallowing it. In the past he’d tried huffing different solvents to deepen his voice. He found one that worked, but only temporarily. And since he couldn’t keep from passing out afterwards, it didn’t do him any good. So he turned to smoking, which, aside from deepening his voice a little over time, also had the advantage of making him look more grown-up. Or so he thought. Vinnie still had to take out his driver’s license each time he wanted a pack of squares. And it was never the quick once-over of the compulsory sort a clerk gives to simply remain in compliance. He and his license were almost always given thorough scrutiny. The clerk, if he was older, would hold the license out at arms length and look down at it with his eyebrows raised high. Then, he’d eyeball Vinnie with his head down so he could see over the rectangular rims of his reading glasses. Boy, did that just eat Vinnie up. He was 23 and had two cars and a house to his name. There were 17 hairs on his chest. He was a grown man. Couldn’t they see that? He would have shown them too.

And that was just it. Vinnie never had the opportunity to show them, any of them. It always worked that way, where, just as he’d figured that he was being done some egregious injustice on account of his small stature and he’d resolved to make a stand, why, then, the other person would seem just as disinterested as a doorknob. Vinnie was sure that the whole world laughed at him behind his back. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some people noticed he was a bit short, certainly. But it was never cause for fits of the giggle bugs. No matter, though, everything mocked Vinnie’s size. Take a simple handshake. Nothing could be more civil and agreeable than a handshake between two fellows. It was a joke to Vinnie, a god-awful joke. His hand was almost invariably swallowed every time by his counterpart. A handshake makes fellows of otherwise natural adversaries, puts one on an equal level with the other. Vinnie felt all the keen brotherhood of the handshake right up until the handshake itself. Then he made his hand as stiff as he could to assert himself and to prevent its being crushed, and cursed the god-awful humiliating experience with all his mite. He knew he was just as good as any other man, but somehow he felt inferior.

Nothing pissed off Vinnie as much as midgets and dwarves. They were special and he was just short. And he hated the pygmy tribes of Africa, too, as they could at least enjoy acceptance within their own culture since it was composed of people like themselves. It was no matter to Vinnie that they were exploited by the larger people of the towns and villages.....

The waitress finished taking Vinnie's order. She went back to the kitchen. And Vinnie's worst nightmare came true....


© 2005 George Czar