Actually, I should be drawing Mary a bit taller right now, but it's still rather difficult for me to picture a child being taller than her parents. Even though there's no rule that says that can't happen and in fact it seems to almost be the norm. Especially in a case like this when the parent in question is a couple inches from being clinically a dwarf. Or is that midget? I get the two terms mixed up sometimes.
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This is one of those linguistic quagmires that I should really leave alone, but that I don't really recognize as being hazardous to my health until I get myself immersed too deeply to back out (sort of like the La Brea Tar Pits of the Mind).
There seems to be no definitive agreement as to what the specific difference between a dwarf and a midget is. Both describe individuals who are "abnormally small" but depending on the source, dwarfism usually (but not always) refers to a person who is abnormally small due to a medical condition, and who when compared to a person of "normal" stature is disproportionately built, while a midget (in the classic sense; modern medicine recognizes this as another form of dwarfism) is a "very short" but otherwise properly proportioned person; thus, all midgets are dwarfs, but not all dwarfs are midgets. Follow so far?
Further confusing the issue, in modern medical circles midgets are often called "proportionate dwarfs" (in fact the two terms were not originally synonymous with one another). To make it even more interesting, anyone with an adult height of less than 4'10" can also properly be referred to as a dwarf (according to some definitions), but since short stature alone does not indicate a medical condition, this definition is problematic (I have a friend who, at 5'2", towers over her 4'8" non-dwarf mother). Don't even get me started on the dwarfs of Germanic folklore.
Anyway, disproportionate: dwarf. Proportionate: strictly speaking either, but usually a midget.
By the way, love the comic. :D
@Dan: Ah, well, in that case I suppose Mom would technically be a dwarf if she were two inches shorter. Since she's missing about six inches of leg and arm length. Don't really know if she'd have a clinical diagnosis to make it official, though.
Speaking of Germanic dwarves, Mom and Grandpa are built like that and are German. Coincidence?
And are you? Taller than your mom, that is? ^^
@Robert: Yeah. By three inches, which isn't much, but that's that.
Oh good! Then you're still a mobile chin rest! =^-^= (Teasing ya, lass!)
@Robert: Yeah, that's me. :P
I can never get over the fact that I am now taller than my mother and my sisters. And since my dad is shrinking, I actually am slightly taller than him.
@Journo: It's a weird feeling, for sure. I still feel a little odd when she tells me to reach something for her.
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