Eat your vegetables!

I’m short! It’s so obvious. It’s the first thing everyone notices when they first meet me. I haven’t grown since the sixth grade. In fact, I think I’ve shrunk. Everyone in my family is of average height or taller. What the hell happened to me? Do you know the sad part? I ate my broccoli.

When I was a baby, I used to hate eating certain vegetables. Unlike most kids, I didn’t mind eating brussel sprouts and I took a liking to salad and green beans. But one thing I hated eating was broccoli and mushrooms. I managed to avoid mushrooms but my mom always made me eat broccoli. When I asked why I should have to eat the disgusting vegetable, my mom would respond “it will make you tall.” I felt that was a good enough reason to shovel the gross vegetable down my throat.

I ate them and I grew to whopping five feet tall. I thought I would grow a bit through junior high or high school so I continued to eat broccoli. That, of course, never happened. Finally, I decided to confront my mother and tell her that I was going to sue her for punitive damages. Eating broccoli was painful and it didn’t deliver the desired results. And do you know what my mom said in response to me? “Without the broccoli, you would have been only four feet tall.”