5 Insane Realities of My Life as a Dwarf

People are dwarf illiterate. That's the only way to explain why so many people, even those in minority demographics who really ought to know better, just assume everybody of dwarf size is the same damn dwarf. Race, body type, fucking gender -- it matters not. If you've seen one dwarf, you've seen ... the only dwarf on Earth, apparently. He gets around.

You name a famous dwarf, chances are I've been mistaken for them. Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer? Yep. Wee Man from Jackass? Absolutely (even though he's Latino and I'm blindingly, devastatingly white). Some random midget wrestler the WWF exploited back in the '80s? You bet. Anybody from Little People, Big World? I'm actually ALL OF THEM. Camera tricks and simple editing just make it seem like an entire family.

My day job is at a casino. Some guy came up to me and asked me why I wasn't working in my usual department. I was confused, since I do only one job (dealing cards) and that doesn't exactly require a department. I told him that, and he just kept insisting, "No, no, I see you working there all the time." And that's when it hit me: he had mistaken me for the other dwarf on the casino's payroll. Who is female. With long, blonde, wavy hair. I, on the other hand, am decidedly dude-ish, with short dude-ish hair. We look not one bit alike, except for the fact that both of us are short enough to get kicked off a roller coaster. But despite Yoda making it perfectly clear that size matters not, it clearly matters bunches to oblivious jerks.

On the other hand, I've been getting a lot of "Hey, aren't you Tyrion from Game of Thrones?" recently, and I'm obviously totally cool with that.

And we're not sideshow anomalies -- a lot of families have one or two dwarfs while everybody else towers over them and taunts them with delicious pizza that they cannot reach. Once again, chalk this phenomenon up to simple science. Dwarfism isn't a disease, a side effect of inbreeding, a result of corrupted DNA, or a voodoo curse -- it's just a genetic mutation called skeletal dysplasia. While technically this is a hereditary condition, it's also very recessive (at best, one baby out of every 4,000 draws the short straw) and thus highly unlikely to rear its tiny head very often. In other words, the likelihood of an entire family co-holding the World Limbo Championship is pretty damn slim.

But here's the problem with Tyrion: his dwarfism is a huge part of his character. He's been given shit about it his whole life, derided by so many as simply "the dwarf," or "imp," or some other insult about his size. It's the constant reminder of his dwarfism that's bothersome. We don't want to be reminded that we're small all the time. We just want to be people, looked at on the same level as everybody else. And you know who gets that more than any other progressive or serious property? Jackass.

Yep, Johnny Knoxville's magnum opus is what I point to when people ask about models for dwarf tolerance. Sure, maybe they're running around in diapers or belly-flopping onto alligators or doing some other stupid shit -- but they treat Wee Man as an equal. He's one of them. He has to do embarrassing stuff, but so does everyone else. He may have a dumb nickname, but he's not their little mascot, out there killing himself while Knoxville and Steve-O sit back and sip beer and laugh at the poor people. He's a jackass through and through -- he just happens to come in a different size (and is a legit pro skater that can do things on a plank with wheels that most people can't even stand on regardless of height).

Then there are the dwarf wrestlers. Not the WWF, mind you, where dwarfs are called midgets (not the kindest word on Earth), dress like leprechauns, and basically demean themselves instead of wrestling. In the past, they'd even get spanked by the ref at times, because short people are actually babies. But go to Mexico and dwarf wrestlers are treated very well. Known as Mini-Estrella, these are legitimate athletes who are presented seriously (well, as seriously as any pro wrestler could hope for), even successfully competing with larger athletes in legitimate scripted exhibitions. OK, so it's not the Olympics, but at least nobody's getting spanked.

To be honest ... I'm kind of for it. Not because I'm a self-loathing turd, or because lack of height is such a hindrance -- thanks to technology and human ingenuity, just about every facet of work and life can be successfully performed by little people nowadays. No, it's because of health. Dwarfism might not be a disease, but it's not exactly a dream come true. Dwarfs' lives are often racked with health issues, such as sleep apnea and obesity, but mostly bone and joint issues. At 8 years old, I developed bone spurs in my right knee. When I was 16, my legs started bowing out even more than they already did, and if they hadn't stopped on their own, doctors would have had to surgically realign them. This would have meant cutting my leg bones and pinning them straight, a procedure a lot of dwarfs need eventually.

Like I said, if two dwarfs mate, there's still a good chance their child will be normal-sized. But if it's not, and two dwarfs create another dwarf, that could lead to double-dominant syndrome. A child born with this condition will be extremely small. It's a miracle if a child with DDS survives more than a couple months.

So, I say bring on gene therapy. It's not about eliminating race, sexual thought, or bone claws -- it's about saving and extending the future. A world where as many children as possible grow up healthy and have a fair shake at remaining so sounds pretty damn good to me. And if that means my generation is one of the last to experience the joys of endless Lucky Charms jokes, then so be it.

Jason Iannone edits articles, lays them out, interviews people, and writes columns. Loudly complain about a minor typo he made in 2010 via Facebook and Twitter.

For more insider perspectives, check out 7 Adventures of the World's Biggest Pot Smuggler. And then check out 24 Video Game Plot Twists That Would Have Blown Your Mind.

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