The smallest man in the world thinks twenty inches is the watershed. There is life before twenty inches, and life after. He’s still more than twenty inches tall. Once he slips below that, he thinks, something profound will change.

He doesn’t know what.

This door he’s knocking on: one day he’ll be small enough to walk underneath the damned thing. He’ll still knock first, though. He won’t just barge right in.

Actually, if it had a cat door, he could fit through that now. Easily. Like walking through a garage door, almost.

But there is no cat door.

The smallest man in the world has a secret. It is one of the following things:

• He has a tattoo of a tortoise on his arm. It shrinks with him. He is relieved about that, he had feared someday it would grow into a full-body tattoo.
• The smallest man in the world seeks to emulate god. Aim high, is his motto.  God’s main quality, the smallest man in the world thinks, is that he leaves you the hell alone. The smallest man in the world tries hard to leave other people alone. He fails a lot, especially with his kids. And even when he succeeds, it is sometimes misinterpreted as neglect. Your most important job is to be you, he thinks, who am I to interfere with that?
• The smallest man in the world would probably tailgate people if he had a sportscar.