A Little Person Insulted Me
What happened next changed my life
Mike, 39, a New Yorker with dwarfism, worked with me at a training company in Hong Kong. We didn’t know each other well. But what I did know impressed me.
He had an Ivy League MBA and a Fortune 500 resume. He wore tailored mini-suits with silk ties and suspenders. And he was built like a French bulldog: muscular and compact, with a square jaw.
Each day at lunchtime, I’d see him through the windows of the company gym curling dumbbells half his size.
With that physicality came a cocksure way of talking.
“Hey, Sammy?” I once heard him say to the elderly janitor, pointing at the trash. “Take this shit out, why don’t you?”
Noticing me watching, he shrugged and flashed a grin that could’ve charmed a pig to go clean. Then he waddled over to his office.
A Loss of Face
Nobody dared challenge Mike on matters of content. He had authored our most successful courses and innovated ways to deliver them.
But I saw their silence as misguided. Shouldn’t an organization strive to enhance its services?
One day, after a session where my clients raised concerns about inaccuracies in our material, I crossed paths with Mike in the break room. As I privately shared what had happened, I noticed the muscles in his jaw tightening.
“Just do your job, Jack,” he said loudly, rolling his eyes at nearby colleagues.
“What?” I said, caught off guard.
“You heard me,” he said. “How about vetting the material before you deliver it.”
“But those were your errors,” I said, feeling my arms and face burn.
“I shouldn’t have to babysit you,” he said.
His words angered me, but I took a deep breath. I swallowed the urge to escalate the situation and walked away.
But Mike’s voice rang out after me: “How ‘bout a little more hard work, big fella, a little less whining about your nutty divorce!”
Then he cackled in his piercing way, eliciting chuckles from our coworkers.
Enraged, I rushed towards him, pointing hard: “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again, you little shit!”
He recoiled and the room went quiet.
“Calm down,” I heard someone say.
But I’d crossed the point of no return.
“At least I had a wife!” I yelled. “What woman would ever be interested in you?!”
A manager, Mr. Lau, quickly moved between us, but Mike scurried out of the room.
“Jack,” said Mr. Lau, grabbing my shoulder, “Let it go.”
Breathing hard, I looked at him and said, “I can’t stand that guy, I just can’t stand him.”
“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s alright.”
Two co-workers stared tight-lipped with arching eyebrows, then suddenly left.
(Locals viewed outbursts like mine as especially foreign and crass).
I felt so embarrassed.
But Mr. Lau seemed to take pity on me. He led me down the hallway, saying I shouldn’t take Mike so seriously. Sure, he could be annoying, but his life was hard. On their walks to the Tram after work, Mr. Lau noted, people would often point and laugh, yell taunts, and take snapshots.
He said the way Mike managed to ignore them made him his hero.
At that, Mike poked his head from his office. “Hey Jack, I’m really sorry, man.”
I shook his hand, surprised, and also apologized.
Smirking, he added, “I just had no idea you’re so fragile.”
“Mike,” I said, biting my tongue. “I guess I am.”
Within a week I’d found a new job.
The Aftermath
So many years later, I still regret my jabs about Mike’s height. What can I say? I lost my cool — and with someone a more secure man probably wouldn’t have allowed himself to blast.
Yet, I’d responded to him in the same spirit I would have with anyone else who’d insulted me in that way at that moment in my life.
I’d imagined him perhaps appreciating that I treated him like anyone else.
And I wasn’t far off. About a year after leaving the company, I ran into him drinking alone at a bar. Pretty waitresses were doting on him. The flowing beer and Filipino rock band soothed the tension. We talked about American football, and shared funny stories from expat life.
In fact, our easy rapport stirred a deeper sense of foolishness for how I’d acted. I apologized again, explaining my sense of fairness had been challenged, and I was deeply sensitive at that time about my failed marriage. Mike nodded and admitted he lived with his own rage, which he expressed by “being a ballbuster.”
“Back home it caused me problems,” he said. “Over here no one says anything.”
He claimed to respect me for calling him out. But he confided he’d become fearful when I lost my temper.
“Look,” he said. “I’m vulnerable. Literally. You didn’t make threats. But I can never take my safety for granted.”
In part, it explained his edgy persona, and it belied an even deeper vulnerability:
“Being treated as a child at 30, 35, 40 — it feels…really embarrassing and really frustrating.”
“I never saw you as a child,” I said.
“Plenty do. I’m constantly proving I’m a grown-up.”
Aren’t we all, I thought to myself.
A Breakthrough
Before my outburst against Mike, I’d prided myself on showing others kindness, patience, and respect. I was a nurturer, and an advocate, which made me a good fit for training and teaching.
But after the incident, with the help of a perceptive Chinese healer, I realized my dedication to being a “nice guy” required a level of self-sacrifice that generated a lot of inner tension.
To make matters worse, I also tended to suppress feelings that might threaten my self-image, particularly anger.
So while Mike may have let off steam by being provocative or abrasive — not exactly ideal solutions — I smiled, joked, empathized, pep-talked, rescued, and took on too much responsibility.
The results? I had plenty of friends, but also anxiety and back pain that plagued me for years.
My healer identified the connection, explaining my brain had generated such symptoms to distract and “protect” me from the unacceptable feelings gathering below the surface.
Not until some of that rage bubbled up on that memorable afternoon at work did my path toward deeper self-awareness begin.
Welcome to Citronelle 2.0.
Learning to recognize and experience my negative emotions transformed me into a more authentic, resilient person. Amazingly, it also eliminated my anxiety and muscle pain.
The deeper change took longer.
Years and years of pouring raw feelings into journals and plumbing my darkest, most illogical truths have brought me a measure of peace I’d never thought possible.
I let go of intellectualizing my emotional pain, especially from my most important relationships, and grew to understand who I really am: an imperfect individual who, above all, seeks to share my humanity with other imperfect individuals.
Today, when I walk the hills of this great city, or just sit alone at my window watching the Star Ferry cut across the harbor, I sometimes reflect on my intense, brief encounter with Mike — and more pleasantly, our truthful conversation in the bar — with a deep sense of gratitude.
I’d allowed myself to be seen on those occasions.
And I needed to be seen. We all do.
Copyright © 2023 by Jack Citronelle
