Shorty Rossi - Four Feet Tall and Rising: A Memoir

Copyright 2012 by Shorty Rossi
All rights reserved.

All photos are from the Luigi Francis Shorty Rossi Collection unless otherwise credited.

Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rossi, Shorty.

Four feet tall & rising : a memoir / by Shorty Rossi; with SJ Hodges.1st ed.
p. cm.

1. Rossi, Shorty. 2. Television personalitiesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Theatrical agentsUnited StatesBiography. 4. DwarfsUnited StatesBiography. I. Hodges, S. J. II. Title.
PN1992.4.R595A3 2012
791.45028092dc23 2011035495

eISBN: 978-0-307-98589-7

Jacket design by Laura Duffy
Jacket photography by Cigars International

v3.1

Its impossible to dedicate this book to just one person. So many people have influenced my life. So, instead, I dedicate this book to my six pit bulls: Geisha, Mussolini, Bebi, Hercules, Domenico, and Valentino.

If it wasnt for them, I would not be who I am today .

ve got a big mouth .

I came out of the womb wailing and Ive pretty much been yelling ever since. Over the years, Ive learned some choice words, and I use them with abandon. Swearing adds some flavor to the yelling. Swearing is like putting whipped cream with a cherry on top of all those regular words. You get more for your money. Swearing is an art.

So I swear and I yell. A lot. Ive got opinions and I make them known.

And yeah, Im not an idiot. I know my big mouth isnt the first thing people notice about me. Im short. Shorter than most but taller than some, and in a world where short aint shit, you gotta do something to make sure you dont get swept underfoot. Hence my big mouth. Its gotten me into trouble and its saved my ass, and while it may not be the first thing you notice about me, I guarantee itll be the thing you most remember.

Its this mouth that leads people to believe Ive got a Napoleon complex. Like Im overcompensating for my perceived handicap. Napoleon complex, my ass. That bastard was five-sixwhatd he have to complain about?

Plus, I got good reasons to yell.

I yell cause somewhere in a Los Angeles basement, theres a pit bull with duct tape wrapped around her muzzle, being trained to kill while money changes hands. I yell cause on some news program in Denver, theres a politician demonizing pit bulls to further his own career. I yell cause some punk in Tampas got his fifth box of pit puppies and I know theyll end up in the last cage of an animal shelter before theyre two. I yell cause humans can be the most brutal and heartless animals on the planet. I yell cause a pit bull cant and somebody needs to.

I yell cause pits are my family.

We are the same breed. We are short, muscular and stocky, misunderstood, and much maligned. Weve got hard heads, short hair, and our bad reputations precede us every time. We are judged by the actions of a few. We are treated like the enemy before we even make your acquaintance. We are feared. We are banned. We are excommunicated.

Pit bulls and ex-cons, we got a lot in common.

Except, I dont wear my heart on my sleeve, and Ive got no patience for stupidity. I cant sleep all day and I much prefer a good cigar and red wine to a bowl of mashed beef. I might stand at crotch level but Im not gonna sniff you. And trust me, if you raise your hand to me, I wont be the one ducking and cowering.

On second thought, I guess, in most ways Im not like a pit at all.

Theyre much, much nicer than me.

was ripped from my mommys womb on the 10th of February, 1969, in a doctors office in West Covina, California. My mom is a Little Person, and Little moms just arent big enough for a babys head to be delivered naturally, so like the three kids born before me, I came by C-section.

First in the lineup was my sister Linda, born in 1960. She was what Little People call tall, what others might consider to be of average height, and from the nuts of a different daddy, a fact I discovered much later when I was in prison and started researching my genealogy, digging into my familys past to try to understand how I ended up behind bars and why I was the way I was. I found a birth certificate and a marriage license that proved Linda was born two years before my parents even met and married. It wasnt the only secret I unearthed. There were lots and lots of secrets.

Another of those secrets was Michael, a baby boy born less than two years after Linda. Michaels baby picture hung on the wall of our living room, a constant reminder that Dads first son had died young, barely two months old, of pneumonia. But the truth was Michael didnt die of pneumonia. Michael died of double-dominant syndrome. Michael inherited two bad genes, two dominant achondroplasia (dwarfism) genesone from Mom and one from Dad. Usually a baby that is double dominant doesnt even make it to delivery. The mom miscarries or theres a stillbirth. But Michael somehow beat the odds and made it to the world just in time to leave it again.

So Mom and Dad got back in the bedroom and tried again, and on December 18, 1963, my sister Janet was born. Like my sister Linda, Janet was born tall. The chances were fifty-fifty that the babies would come out normal. Mom and Dad rolled the dice three times and won twice. They were so proud. Two tall daughters. Success.

Why they waited another six years, until 1969, before they had me, I dont know. They were Catholic but that didnt mean Mom wanted a big family. Babies are usually hard on Little women. Most of them have at most one or two kids cause they suffer from so many miscarriages and problems. But I guess Dad always wanted a boy. Having lost Michael, and with the odds in his favor, he decided to roll the dice one more time. Plus, Mom had handled her other pregnancies without much trouble, so it seemed like everything would work out again.

I was the heaviest baby of all. Eight pounds plus. They knew the minute I came out that I had achondroplasia. Its easy to tell, trust me. You know if you have a dwarf child. Back then, there was no way to predict such a birth. Now, doctors can diagnose dwarfism in the womb, giving parents the option to terminate pregnancies. They can even spot the chromosome that indicates double dominance. Now, even dwarf parents, who would be least likely to care if their child is Little, can still choose to terminate a double-dominant pregnancy. There will be fewer and fewer of us walking this Earth. There already are.

I was a third-generation Little Person, the son of dwarf parents and the grandson of a maternal dwarf grandma. Being third generation, my diagnosis was dismal. The more a dwarf reproduces, meaning the same dwarf, the weaker the genes, the more chances to trigger a double-dominant gene. The doctors told Mom and Dad I wouldnt live long, and even if I did, they predicted Id have severe physical limitations, suffer from limb deformities, and be in constant pain. They basically pronounced me handicapped, useless, and dead. They were wrong.