You can't just let people congregate willy-nilly, without some structure to the assemblage. In elementary school, it was popular to arrange kids by size order. What the purpose of this method has yet to be revealed; the original inspiration may be lost back in the mists of the 20th century. But each class would be directed to line up with the shortest kid in front and the tallest in the back, with everyone taking their proper position in between. Now if we were going into battle, having the little kids in front would be foolish strategy indeed. It seems it would be much more sensible to have the big kids lead the way, protecting the small and the vulnerable. Maybe it was aesthetic considerations: having the gradually curving line of the tops of our heads creating a graceful effect. The Rockettes are arranged with the tallest in the middle and gradually tapering down each side to the shortest.
One side effect of this plan was the jockeying for position in the line. Nobody wanted the infamy of being the very shortest (I was usually #3 in the line of girls; of course there were separate lines of boys and girls) and there would be a lot of back to back challenges as contenders asserted their position in the great framework of our society. I myself was protective of my position, insisting that the two shorter girls definitely belonged in front of me and keeping on the lookout from girls behind me that I might have surpassed height-wise. My best friends were usually among the taller girls, so we were usually much separated at these times. Also, the shortest girl in my class was rather sickly and absent a great deal, causing me to be closer to the front than I really belonged. Heaven forbid if both shorties were out and I was at the very front of the line!
Fortunately I had the ultimate revenge: I kept growing long after most of the others had stopped. While my classmates had reached full growth by 13 or 14, I kept chugging along, at a steady two inches a year; no rapid growth spurts for me! And like the story of the tortoise and the hare, I gradually snuck past many of them, still growing while in college. I even learned recently that I at some point I had eked out yet another inch without knowing it. I was having a bone density test and when my height was measured I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was just a smidge under 5 ' 5". Let's get together and line up now!
By high school, size place lining up seems to have fallen out of favor and the preferred method of arranging people become alphabetical order. Whenever names for something would be called, they would begin with names starting with the letter "A" and proceed on through the alphabet. This time my problem was the reverse. Having a name starting with "Y" would put me toward the end of every list. Not the VERY last; there would usually be a "Young" or "Ziff" following me, but I would have to wait while everybody else got called for whatever goody was being handed out, either diplomas or paychecks. Wonder how the shortest girl in my second grade class felt about all this? Her last name was Ziff.
