When I think about this...being the shortest is probably a lot like being being the one who comes from poverty, etc. Short is probably just a definition of not meeting the standard or the definition of the "elite? Strange how the "elite" seem to permeate (I so wish there was spell check here) so much of life.
Criticism only in the fact that those two white horses are going to need to be cleansed before ridden again.
I was short, skinny and wore glasses all of which were targets for being teased in school but I took it like a champion and those that did never became a friend of mine.
@Chrissy Page : None of my business, I realize, so if I offend with personal questions, tell me. I've always been interested in European-born folks coming here, and having to learn English. My Mother arrived at age 5 from Czechoslovakia, then Bohemia, I guess, on the Queen Mary, two months before the Titanic sank. She of course spoke herb native language fluently when necessary, but had an amazingly broad vocabulaery just as you do. My wife's Mother, all of them born here, claimed my Mother spoke with an "accent", the first ever to notice it, if it existed at all. I've been told I talk as though I'm from Wisconsin! (??) Frank
Usually if you are a young child when you learn a new language, you won't have much of an accent. Maybe a very slight one. I do speak fluent hungarian but when I lived there for 6 years with my husband because of his work, I was told I had an accent in Hungarian. Throughout all my years in school, nobody ever said I had an accent. Later after moving from PIttsburgh to Chicago, some would say I had an East Coast accent. I don't hear it, so I don't know. @John Falcon has spoken to me in person and I think he's said that I don't have an accent.