Shrinkage

My sister called me this afternoon to ask two questions:

1. Did you watch the first episode of The Amazing Race? (Of course.... there are two women from Houston in this one.)

2. Are you as tall as you used to be? (Of course. Well, at least I think so. How tall was I?)


And so began the search for height. I had to look no further than the pantry-closet door in my kitchen, where my husband marked my height-line one Saturday morning when our young friends C and L were here. He had just marked C's height on "her" door that day, and then he used the laundry room door to start recording L's height. (We didn't want L to think she was less important to us than C, so we started her on her own door.) After that was done, C got the idea that we should all have our heights marked on a door. My husband used the pantry-closet door for my height-line, then I used the same door to mark his height. The girls were happy, and my husband and I didn't think about our height-lines after that.

Until this afternoon, however, when my sister wanted to know if I was shrinking. She thinks she's shrinking, and she thinks her husband is also shrinking. I just turned 54 in January, and my sister is seven years younger. Honestly.... do women start shrinking at this age?

I tried to measure my height-line on the pantry door. In order to do that, I had to put the cell phone down on the counter--- you just can't hold a cell phone on your shoulder the way you can with a "regular" phone. So there I was, with a cloth tape measure in one hand, trying to hold the pantry door still with my other hand while Mickey Kitty was trying to grab the bright yellow tape measure. My measurement came out to five feet, two inches. What???? I know I was taller than that.

I got back on the phone to give my sister the sad news: I'm shrinking. See?!?!?!? was her reply, and she shrieked it into the phone. I told her to have her husband measure her when he got home from work, and let me know how tall she was. Or short. Whatever the case may be.

When I hung up the phone, I put Mickey Kitty out on the screen porch so I could re-measure that height-line without interruption. And lo and behold---- I realized that I was measuring down to the bottom of the door and the door is above the ceramic tile floor. I wasn't as short as I thought I was.

My husband came home right after that, and I told him about the height-line and my sister's phone call, and I asked him to measure me again. Seriously measure, not just a flick of the pencil against the door.

I called my sister back, to give her my "official height" of five feet, three and 3/8 inches. I told her the pantry door is marked with that number, and today's date. So I'll check it in a year or two and see if the number is the same. She's waiting for her husband to come home so he can "seriously" measure her as well.

She hasn't called me back yet, and it's been over an hour now. Her husband is probably still laughing. (You know how men are.... there's only one kind of "shrinkage" that they take seriously.)