Short Story

With apologies to Tyrion Lannister…

A guy got in touch with me on Facebook recently.  His name is Richard, and the last time I saw him he was ten years old.

His mother and father were friends of my parents.  Kenny and I saw them- along with his older sister and brother (who were about our age)- at family barbecues and get-togethers on and off through our childhood.

Richard was several years younger than us.  The pesky little tyke trailing in the wake of his older siblings.  But he was very precocious and very smart.  (Which is probably why he is now an opthalmologist in St. Louis.)

But I remember him vividly because of one episode emblazoned on my memory…

My grandmother had a sister- my great aunt Caroline.

My Aunt Carrie was born to be an old maid.  Embittered, haughty, snobbish- a real cold fish.

But one day- just when everyone had given up all hope for a match for this sibling- along came my Uncle Sol and saved her from spinsterhood.

Now my great uncle-by-marriage, Sol…

Well, not to point to fine a point on it- he was a dwarf.

Short and misshapen, and cursed with kind of a hunchback besides.

And mean.

He was a jeweler by trade, and I always thought of him as something straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  When I was little, I always confused him with Rumpelstiltskin.

And as I grew up and got to know him better, I saw no need to emend my childhood appraisal.  (If I was a kid today, I’m sure I’d be thinking Game Of Thrones.)

He was a grouchy, little dwarf.

Who didn’t like children.

He liked opera.  And art.  He was cultured and successful.

And my grandmother’s family was indebted to him for taking sour old Carrie off their hands.  They were all transplanted New Yorkers who liked cards, politics, gambling and fighting- with everyone about everything, but Sol became a full-fledged member of her raucous family in no time.

And my Aunt Carrie loved him- as my mother always took great pains to point out- and even though they never had any children, the marriage was a great success.

(My mother also pointed out the fact that he was an uncle by marriage only and we needn’t worry that “shortness” ran in the family.  Completely non PC, but there it was.)

My mother also trained us never to notice or allude to his lack of inches in any way. And Kenny and I- along with our cousins Stuart and Joanie- went along with this “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” doctrine.

It was just one of those “family” things with which we grew up.

My Uncle Jack worked for the Bears, my other Uncle Jack was loud and worked for Marshall Korshak, my Uncle Irving was bald, my Uncle Ralph was a high school coach, my grandfather liked to play the piano, my grandmother was a chow hound, my Uncle Sol was short.

No big deal.  (No pun intended.)  We kids took it in stride.

But other people did not.

My great uncle Sol always drew stares and tactless comments wherever he went.

And one fateful summer Sunday afternoon, Uncle Sol and six year old Richard met up at our house.

There had been a confab the week before between his mother and my own. My mom knew that Richard was chatty and smart, and she could see trouble ahead.

“What should we tell Richard about Uncle Sol?” my mother asked his mother, Estelle.

“Nothing.  Don’t even mention it,” came the answer.  “Richard won’t even notice.”

The house was teeming with relatives and friends.  My uncle Herbie had fired up the barbecue grill.  (Uncle Herbie loved to grill so much that Kenny had dubbed him “Hot Herbie.”)

The party was jumping, and then in came the late arrivals- little Richard and his family.

Even though our living room was crammed to bursting with merry-makers, Richard made a beeline right to his quarry.

He strode right up to my Uncle Sol, looked him straight in the eye (they were much the same height) and said in a  clear,piping voice…

“Why are you so short?”

Winter is coming…

End of short story.