Life as a 'little person' in a big city

Like, I'm a dwarf, and you know, I have dwarfism, and I am smaller than you, but that doesn't mean you need to treat me a specific way, just treat me the way you would treat anybody else. My name is Jonathan Novick, I'm 22 years old, I live in New York City. I'm a freelance video editor. I kept having these negative interactions with different people, and it eventually got to a point where there was one instance that just pushed me over the edge. There was just like a crowd of people around the building, I wasn't really paying much attention, and one of them, a gentleman, like late teens, maybe early 20s, physically jumped over me. And you know, it was at that moment where I realized, there's nothing I can do here, there's absolutely nothing I can do here. I can't yell at them because it'll be funnier for them. Like, I can't chase after them because I can't catch them. I can't, you know, report them because they didn't do anything that broke any laws. I just felt powerless, and that's when I started thinking I need to do something. This camera, which is actually known as a button camera, because the lens I'm going to be using is so tiny. When people stop and take a photo of me, the first question is, why? It seems that I could very easily turn into a joke, or like, ha ha ha, like there's a dwarf on the subway, or like there's a midget over here, something along those lines. To be able to post a video and actually make a dent, a powerful dent in the internet, enough for people to see it, feel it, and respond has been nothing more than amazing. There's an organization in the United States called the Little People of America. LPA, the actual Facebook page for the organization, re-blogged my video, and I've been getting a lot of messages from other little people in different areas, like from Canada, from the UK, from other parts of the United States, saying like, thank you so much for making this video. This really speaks to, you know, like what we go through. These experiences also seems to resonate with a lot of other people with different lifestyles than just dwarfism. I've been receiving messages from people who have muscular dystrophy, who have Tourette's, who have cerebral palsy, just saying that, you know, I really, really understand what you go through, and I'm so happy that you're able to show it. The next time you see someone who is different than you, think about what their day might be like. Think about all the events of their life leading up to that point, then think about their day, and think about what part of their day do you want to be.