Short-statured on C Street | Episode 1: How We Met

Podcast Transcript: 

Jacq: Kia ora and welcome to short-statured on C Street. My name is Jacq - and Umi! This is a small podcast about the two of us. And we both have different forms of short stature. We will be sharing about how we ended up living together, what it's like putting up with each other's crap and the adventures and shenanigans we have gotten up to since living together starting in early 2020. In this first episode, we're just going to do an introduction to how we ended up living together in the first place. So to begin with, why did you move to Dunedin, Umi?

Umi: Thanks for the introduction Jacq! I have moved to Dunedin to study at the University of Otago. When I came to have a look at the University and I fell in love with the beauty of the place, especially with the clock tower, and I was like I want to study here. So I moved almost seven years ago. How about you Jacq?

Jacq: That was 2016. I came down here from Christchurch. I grew up in Christchurch, and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to do first-year Health Sciences. It was a terrible idea. However, I kind of liked Dunedin and stayed. So our first meeting wasn't really a meeting. It was your mother pointing me out at the convocation ceremony right?

Umi: Yes. When we started Uni, I attended the ceremony with my mom who was visiting me from Japan at the time. And we both use wheelchairs so we were sitting in the front row of the stadium, and we saw you wheeling in your chair. My mum pointed to you and said to me “you should become friends with her”. And so I knew of you from the first day of university. But we met each other maybe like three months later in the year because I lived in a hall of residence and you also lived in a hall of residence on the same street. So one day I was heading to one of my lectures with my friends. We saw you at the intersection at the lights.

Jacq: And I don't remember much but you've told me and I believe you because my memory is absolutely appalling that I was a bit stuck. And I was being a stubborn muppet. And not really wanting to ask for help. But you've got one of your friends to help me because I think my front wheels were stuck.

Umi: That's right. So one of my friends offer if you wanted the help to get up to the
pedestrian and I took the chance and then went like “oh hey, would you like to get a coffee?”

Jacq: And my sense of stranger danger wasn't that bad back then.

Umi: Lucky for me.

Jacq: Yes, very lucky. So I said yes. And we met up. You believe it's at the Otago museum?

Umi: So we went for a coffee a few weeks later but I remember it being a bit of awkward coffee catch up because I was feeling worried that you might think “Why is this girl talking to me? Is it because we are both disabled?” and like, that wasn't my only intention. But that is obviously the most obvious commonality.

Jacq: So kind of entertaining dilemma when you meet someone else with a disability of how much do you actually talk about it? Do they even want to talk about it? Do you and how do you bring it up and how do people talk around their own disabilities? It's, it's a bit of a weird one.

Umi: It really is. And I have actually avoided many of the disabled people when I was younger than that. So I really wanted to not do that. And so you are one of my first disabled friend I actively made myself.

Jacq: I feel kinda special.

Umi: Yes, you are.

Jacq: And then we didn't catch up for ages right?

Umi: Yeah (laughs)

Jacq: We had a great start

Umi: We didn’t continue for a while, unfortunately. But we found each other again like after a year, and both of us can't remember how but I must have somehow invited you over to have food with me at the flat I was living at that time.

Jacq: Yeah, I can't remember how it started. But you essentially started inviting me around for dinner once a week. And that was super lovely. My mental health was absolutely appalling at that time, so yeah, that was really, really lovely. And I also got to meet a lot of your other friends through that who you're also invited around for dinner and yeah, that was really cool.

Umi: Yes, that was a really fun time. And then we started to spend more time together. And one of the adventures we also went to was to visit one of your friends who lived little bit out of town, and you would take me to visit her sometimes or sometimes even once a week for some periods of time. In one of the trips, and you told me that you were thinking or you bought a house.

Jacq: I think I told you when because my parents… so fast forward quite a bit. In 2019, my parents realised that I wasn't going anywhere. And rather than having to come down from Christchurch every year to move all of my crap to another flat that's probably not so great. We got the very lucky position to be able to buy a place down here. And so the end of 2019, we bought the place we live in now and when we were going out to Karitane which is about half an hour out of Dunedin and I told you that I bought the place well, my parents bought
the place and your first words were-

Umi: Can I move in with you or can I live with you?

Jacq: Which is pretty great. And then we rock up to our friend's place. We hang out and I tell my friend and she goes “Oh, congratulations”. And then that was when you kind of clicked that that's the slightly more socially acceptable thing to say.

Umi: Yeah, I only said congratulations after our other friend told you congratulations which was super entertaining.

Jacq: It’s very you though with love. It's very you.

Umi: So you knew what you were getting yourself into ish

Jacq: “Ish” Definite emphasis on the “ish”. Yeah, so you moved in right towards the end of 2019. Like December ish. And, yeah, so we've moved in together. It’s a four bedroom place. And so initially, we had us then my partner at the time and another flatmate and that was pretty glorious. We've had a few flatmate changes and three years later, we're still here. We're still sitting around the dining table talking absolute nonsense. And yeah, that's a very abridged version of how we met.

Umi: So here’s more to come from now. And welcome short statured on C-street.

Jacq: All right, we will. You'll hear from us later. Stay tuned ish. Hopefully. Ka kite.

Umi: Ka kite!