When I was 12, when all of my other friends (although I didn’t have many at that age) were shopping for ‘graduation-dance’ clothes, I was spending an inordinate amount of time in changing rooms crying.

Why so glum, you may wonder - and indeed you should be wondering because that is exactly the purpose of this post.

I wasn’t always of average height for my age. I was crying in the changing rooms because it didn’t matter how many neon bracelets I would wear, the winnie-the-pooh dress didn’t look cool. Neither did the snow white dress, or the poofy white flower girl dress, or, for that matter anything frilly and pink.

When I was 12 I was shorter than most of the grade 1 kids in my school. I was still wearing size 6 clothes and I could identify my classroom by the mini-desk from the junior school in the corner.

These days there are a whole slew of ‘fashion’ clothes available for little kids - which freaks me out by the way, a five year old should not be wearing a sequined tank top and mini-skirt. Anyway, back when I was growing up, the only thing that kids six and under (or sized six or under) could wear were little kid clothes…and so I did.
I like to blame my lack of friends (see first sentence) on my Disney adorned sweat pants and I had pretty much resigned myself to a life of loneliness when, low and behold, the summer after grade seven ended I grew. By August I had pretty much reached that ever elusive averageness of height. I could finally wear age appropriate clothes.

Then I started grade 8 at a private school and spent the rest of my high school years wearing a school uniform. The exact same one as the six year olds.