Frankincense & Lavender

Cedric wasn’t sure why he was so enamored with the woman he just met, but he was. Typically he took a fancy to women with long legs who would wear long , flowy skirts with slits that ended at the waistline.

The only way that would happen with Sandy was if she attempted to wear a skirt as a strapless dress. She was the tiniest little thing that he ever did see. And sassy, like his granny liked to say, “sassy for no dang reason.”

But come to think of it, did that tiny phrase even apply to Sandy’s situation because truth be told, Sandy was sassy for a very explicit reason.

Sandy was sassy as a defense mechanism. Because Sandy was constantly and consistently belittled and spoken down to in a condescending manner, as if she were a child.

All because she was vertically challenged.

And that’s the monicker Sandy subscribed to: vertically challenged.

Not little.

Not tiny.

Not even:short.

Because, truth be told, short is too brief of a word to describe the sheer agony and sometimes utter embarrassment involved to exist in a society that doesn’t respect the obstacles and hurdles of those of us who are full-grown adults and just barely five foot tall have to go through.

Think about it.

Grocery shopping, for instance, is the absolute worst when something one wants to buy is up high on a shelf.

Typically if it’s a light enough object, Sandy can usually find a way to poke at or shift the item so that then she can jiggle it airborne so that she could catch it. The only problem with that was sometimes the item would hit another customer, and Sandy would have to profusely apologize.

For the most part the other patron would kind of chuckle and play it off. Some people even offered to help Sandy grab more items off of the shelf for her.

And although the gestures were genuine and sincere, Sandy was kind of embarrassed.

But then a really gorgeous guy came by her with a grabber tool, grabbed a rather large jug of laundry detergent by the handle and placed it into the cart of a woman who obviously had to be his mother.

“Scuse me,” Sandy asked the gentleman, “That’s a really neat little gadget you done got there. Do ya mind me askin where you got it?”

The young man smiled and told Sandy that the grabber tools were located in the housewares department.

Sandy bought six of them and decided to strategically place them about her little bungalow. Any room that did not have a step stool had a a grabber tool.

After all Sandy was fiercely independent.

And of course Cedric knew none of this when he just took over Sandy’s task of handing up her lavender plants by offering up hooks she didn’t even need because they came with the planters she bought. Sandy bought em that day just after she bought the grabber tools to get things down off of the top shelves at the market.

Because she was mad.

Mad that she was short.

And there would be times folk would mock her or giggle at her because of her height not knowing how offensive that was until she got angry one day. It was described in the market chronicle as a member of the lollipop guild from the Wizard of Oz went on a drunken, profanity laden tirade in front of children in the housewares department of an infamous retail store.

***Dark Chocolate Disco w Crispy Rice Topping, triple hazelnut cappuccino with ice water and Durban Poison 🌱💨