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By CARRIE FERGUSON
Staff Writer

Dealing with the challenges of dwarfism, Bonnie Mullinax aims to teach us all a tale of the human heart

The teacher stands tall at the front of the classroom on the first day of school.

''Do you have any questions?'' she asks her new pupils, looking them squarely in the eye.

They're quick to reply:

''How did you get that way?''

''Will you ever grow?''

''Can you drive?''

Bonnie Mullinax has heard these questions each of the 24 years she's been a teacher. Inevitable ones about her looks and her life. They're the same ones she's heard outside the classroom, from curious, and sometimes rude, strangers, too.

There's no hiding the fact she's a dwarf, that many 10-year-olds tower over her or that she's eye to eye with most 5-year-old kindergartners. So she lays it out there and gets it out of the way.

''I tell them 'I know I'm little and it is a little different to have a teacher who is littler than you are. But I am your teacher and I expect you to respect me just like you would any other teacher.'

''And then, they can move on,'' she says.

Bonnie teaches special-education students at Hendersonville's Jack Anderson Elementary. Her students are the gifted to whom learning comes quickly and easily — a disability by Tennessee law — and the learning disabled, who need a bit of extra time and attention.

In her classroom she hopes the young people, regardless of talent and ability, will learn their schoolwork and expand their minds and hearts about disabilities and differences. Maybe their parents, or the adults she encounters in the course of her life, will get the same lesson just by meeting her, knowing her, Bonnie says.

Especially since, as she points out, everyone has something that makes them different. And everyone has something about themselves they don't like, whether they're the brilliant child, the pretty girl or the fat kid.

''I tell them a lot of people have things that aren't perfect, everybody has something they don't like about themselves and this is something God gave me,'' she says.

''It is OK to be different. Everybody has qualities, no matter what their differences, you just have to find those qualities.''

Constant proving ground

It's been Bonnie's lifelong challenge to have her own special qualities — her sense of humor, her compassion and her artistic nature — noticed as much as her height.

Sure, standing 3 feet 10 inches means reaching a top cabinet, finding clothes that fit and grocery shopping are challenges. But day-to-day, the perceptions and prejudices of others are the most difficult for the 48-year-old woman.

''I get tired of being stared at in the grocery store, in Wal-Mart, in a new town,'' she says. ''People have asked me if I've been in the circus.''

The answer is no.

From time to time Bonnie, who wears a child's size 2 shoe, will sport a T-shirt featuring Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Another T-shirt reads ''Real live dwarf'' on the front and ''Not really, it's just a costume'' on the back.

''I'm gutsy,'' she says with a smile.

Bonnie was born into a warm circle of family in Louisville's tight Jewish community. She is what doctors call a first-generation phenomenon: a dwarf born into a family for the first time.

She has the most common type of dwarfism, achondroplasia. It is a genetic condition that results in disproportionately short arms and legs compared to average-size people.

''Luckily, my parents gave me a good attitude about life,'' she says.

And she has needed it.

It can be difficult and exhausting trying to keep a positive attitude in the face of blatant stares, rude questions and lifelong discrimination.

''There have been times when it wasn't all right. In high school I always felt left out because nobody wanted to date me and girls my age didn't want to be with me. After I graduated from college, nobody wanted to hire me,'' Bonnie says.

It took her two years to find a teaching position. It was the Erlanger, Ky., school district that finally took a chance on the Vanderbilt grad who had been working as a secretary to support herself.

''I was persistent,'' Bonnie says. ''I was willing to do what I needed to do to prove myself.

''I will always have to prove myself. But that's my life.''

Finding a network

At college, in Illinois and at Vanderbilt, in the experimental '70s, she struck out on her own, taking bolder steps out of sight from overprotective parents. She started dating, something she hadn't done in high school. She made the cheerleading squad. She also became sophomore class vice president and homecoming queen.

While she knew about the Little People of America, she didn't want anything to do with what she thought was a support group for dwarfs. But when her son, Stacy, was born in 1989 she realized she would need a support network for herself and for him.

Stacy's father, from whom Bonnie is now divorced, isn't a dwarf, so there was a 50-50 chance Stacy would not have dwarfism. She was optimistic her child wouldn't have the disability and had even been told during her pregnancy that the ultrasound showed she was carrying an average-size baby. She felt guilt for passing on the trait. By coincidence, a hospital nurse had a relative with dwarfism and she urged the new mother to contact the local Little People chapter.

''When Stacy was born, I learned so many things I had avoided. I learned about precautions I had to take and things we are susceptible to,'' she says.

She didn't know there was a certain kind of anesthesia some dwarfs have to avoid: the same anesthesia she got during her C-section delivery of Stacy. She learned about skeletal problems and operations and, most importantly, community.

''I got moral support from people my age who were dealing with the same things,'' she says. And she realized it would be important for Stacy to grow up around other kids like him, especially since Bonnie's family, who could have offered the same support they gave to her growing up, was by then scattered across the country.

Fitting in

Bonnie has made no exceptions for Stacy or for herself. When her new home was built, she didn't have the contractor alter it to make things more easily accessible.

''I want Stacy to learn to cope in an average-size home without modification,'' she says. ''I did.''

Plus, she wanted the storage space, she says.

Bonnie is only a head taller than her kitchen counter, so she needs one of the 10 stools she has scattered around the house to help her reach the cabinets, the sink, the stove and even the toilet. Without the stools, she can't reach the top of the closets. Sometimes even closing the shower curtain is tough because she's too short to drag it when the rings get caught on the bar.

Grabbing wet clothes out of the washing machine is tricky and potentially dangerous. She can't reach the bottom of the washing machine tub and must approach the process with care, for she could fall in and get stuck, head first.

''My arms are too short. I can't push myself out of there,'' she says, chuckling a bit at the image. It has happened to other dwarfs.

The extra maneuvering can be exhausting, but Bonnie doesn't fret over it much. It's just how she must live, how she always has lived.

''Bonnie doesn't let her size keep her from doing anything,'' says Sharon Bowen, president of the Tennessee Chapter of Little People of America and a longtime friend of Mullinax's.

A specially designed tool helps Bonnie reach and grab things from top shelves at home and at the grocery store, though Stacy wishes his mother would remember to take it to the store more often. She also uses a special stick to turn the stove on and off.

''It's just part of my everyday routine. People take a lot of everyday things for granted: going to the bathroom, doing laundry. I can't even scrub my back effectively. My arms are short.

''And I have a difficult time bending. It was easier when I weighed less,'' she adds with a laugh.

No limits

Last week, Bonnie was to undergo a spinal operation to decompress several vertebrae, possibly as many as seven. Dwarfs tend to have sway backs and often have spine problems and back and leg pain. It will be a difficult operation, but without it, the tingling and pain in her body will persist.

''If I don't do it, I could end up in a wheelchair,'' she says.

But none of these things, the annoyances and extreme challenges, are the center of her world. That spot is reserved for her son. The challenges are just a part of what she has to deal with, along with the typical tasks faced by adults and single moms everywhere: work, bill-paying, household chores and plain mothering.

''I love being a mom the best,'' she says.

Stacy, 12, who will be a seventh-grader at Ellis Middle School, is a ''tween'' struggling with growing up and fitting in. He has asked his own questions and shared complaints about being ''different.''

''Sometimes kids make fun of me. I ask them to stop, but they don't. And if I tell, they call me a tattletale,'' says Stacy, a charming and funny young man.

''I ask my mom if there is any possible way I can get tall and she says no way. She says that's just the way you have to deal with life. Maybe she's right.''

Adds Bonnie: ''Even though we've been dealt a bad deck, we still need to be grateful because we are pretty fortunate. My size doesn't limit me.''

Sizing up dwarfism

The Little People of America defines dwarfism as an adult height of 4 feet 10 inches or shorter, among both men and women. It is the result of a medical or genetic condition, caused by hormonal imbalances or gene mutation in utero.

A skeletal disorder, dwarfism occurs in one in 25,000 births, with approximately 80% representing new and spontaneous gene mutations; the rest are family related.

There are more than 100 diagnosed types of dwarfism plus some that have never been fully diagnosed. Short stature, not caused by genetic dwarfism, can be caused by imbalances that can be treated with hormone therapies.

The most frequently diagnosed cause of short stature is achondroplasia, a genetic condition that results in disproportionately short arms and legs when compared to an average-size person. The average height of adults with achondroplasia is 4 feet.

While some people with achondroplasia have undergone painful, and controversial, limb-lengthening surgery, other genetic conditions also result in dwarfism, and they are essentially untreatable.

In some circles, midget is the term used for a proportionate dwarf. However, the term is considered offensive by most people of short stature. Such terms as dwarf, little person, LP and person of short stature all are acceptable. However, the LPA Web site says most people would rather be referred to by their name than by a label.

Although some types of dwarfism may have associated medical complications such as orthopedic problems, most short-stature individuals have a normal life span and normal intelligence.

Little People of America was formed in 1957 when well-known actor Billy Barty made a national public appeal for all little people in America to join him for a gathering in Reno, Nev. Today, the LPA has more than 5,000 members.

Sources: Little People of America and Dr. George Tiller, associate professor of pediatrics and genetics researcher at Vanderbilt University.