This was typically the first morbid thought that crept into my head every morning as the alarm buzzed me awake from whatever dreams I’d been having only moments before. The past six to eight hours had been rendered completely moot in a blur of unconsciousness, not counting a trip to the toilet around three A.M. or so. Today was no different.

“Snooze,” my wife, Catherine, said, her groggy tone somewhat a hybrid of a plea and a demand. Almost reflexively, I rolled over and slapped the snooze button, silencing the alarm. “Thankooo,” Catherine slurred before rolling over and resuming a light session of snoring. Damn, I loved the sound of her snoring.

The next nine minutes lasted a short eternity, with me likely drifting off just before the alarm sang out again. I’ve always wondered how an entire night can go by with a snap of my fingers and the shutting of my eyelids, but nine minutes feels like forever. The only conclusion I could ever come to was that the world wasn’t fair.

Eyes open, but vision still blurry (it looked like there were two overlapping sets of alarm clocks), I groped around and actually turned the darn thing off, not just hitting snooze. It was part of our morning ritual, me and Catherine. Our routine. I always hit the snooze button once, and only once; just enough to feel like we were getting away with something. In its own weird little way, it felt like winning. Little victories.

But today was work. So no sleeping in. Time to get up and get out of bed. If my head hit the pillow again, sleep would win. Sleep never won.

Not that I could go back to sleep, anyways. I had to pee like a racehorse. I’d already woken up once, about an hour ago, but my lethargy outweighed my discomfort, so I’d just rolled over and drifted off again. Now it was time to get up. Time to go to work and face the dangers of the world outside my house.

Time to exist.

Stretching out the first of my morning aches, I walked to the bathroom, whispering “The world isn’t fair,” as I crossed the threshold. It’s my own personal “memento mori,” but it served a different purpose than the generals of the ancient and mythical land of “Roam.” Conquering heroes needed to be reminded of their own mortality, lest they become arrogant.

My own personal motto reminded me of exactly how lopsided the world was so that I’d stay alert. Couldn’t get too cocky. Couldn’t get too comfortable. When the game’s not fair, you can’t afford to rest easy, and the game started every time I stepped out my front door.

That might have been the reason why I never had the master bathroom refurbished. Catherine would grab her phone and shamble to the other side of the house and use the guest bathroom. It made sense, honestly. The seat there fit her, and neither of us were foolhardy enough to go out and buy a potty adapter. Even Catherine, internet whiz that she’d become, wouldn’t buy something like that online. That’s how they getcha.

Me? There was a certain thrill about climbing up the stepladder every morning and pissing into a toilet sized for an Amazon. Another guilty pleasure. Getting away with something, again. Another Little victory.

Oh, yeah. I guess I should mention in case you haven’t figured it out: I’m a Little. Capital “L.” Noun. Not an adjective.

We lived in an Amazon-sized house. Got it relatively cheap with a good mortgage. The old Amazon couple that we’d gotten it from actually seemed pleasantly surprised on the day I showed up to sign the papers.

They’d lost their adopted Little girl to old age and cancer- some things even Amazon tech can’t cure a hundred percent- but had modified the spare bathroom to accommodate someone our size. They were the rare breed that believed in “potty training” Littles. And yes, please note the quotation marks to indicate eye rolling irony. You’ll most likely be seeing a lot of them.

Amazons were crazy; they were almost determined to see Littles as babies that never grew up, at best, and their own personal dolls, at worst. But if you didn’t trigger their eccentricities, they were otherwise very reasonable. I had made sure to remind Catherine of that when I came back from the in-person signing.

In turn, Catherine reminded me if she hadn’t done some careful obfuscation about our stature, (never outright lying, that would have come back to bite us), we wouldn’t have gotten our dream house with such a low mortgage payment.

Only “grown-ups” could handle such stressful responsibilities like a job and a mortgage. Littles who fell behind on their payments weren’t allowed to be grown-ups and pay them late.

We both knew Littles who’d tried to live the dream and had been pressured into signing more than half of their monthly paycheck away. Some of them were still struggling, working overtime and multiple jobs just to make payments and keep food on their table.

Others weren’t…