The Middle Child
I am a middle child sandwiched in-between two brilliant Stanford-educated sisters. A lot has been written about the “poor” middle child, forgotten about while his/her siblings reap the rewards from the parents. That was never my experience although I enjoy using the self-effacing moniker of the poor middle child to get a laugh. My middle experience was largely one of humor and causing embarrassment for my older sister and torturing my younger one. I rather enjoyed my position of anonymity and lower expectations. By contrast the position I felt great sympathy for and was happy to not be was the eldest child. I was reminded of this difficult positioning when my older sister sent me an essay she had written. It was about growing up before there were others to compete for attention. There are a lot of things that being first is the desired outcome. First in the Olympics, first at the French Open, first in line for money are all good firsts. First to drive; first romance; first to get in trouble at school; first to take your SATs – those are not good firsts and not fun. I watched my older sister go through firsts on everything and it was never easy. I was comfortable in my middle-ness because she had done the heavy lifting. After all, she was the first for my parents and thus they had no experience in parenting a child through all of those difficult firsts.
Middle allows you to do things your older sister would have been put in the penalty box for days, but being middle it was just cute and funny. I am pretty sure it was not funny to the one who was first.
My sister was the first in our family to have a boyfriend. He was right out of college boy central casting. Picture a green MG roadster driven by a 6’2” tennis-playing fraternity guy attending we-are-just-like-the-ivy-league-Claremont College and he smoked a pipe. Really?? Who smokes a pipe? This first-ever boyfriend made the first-ever visit to our house for the first time.
Let me frame the picture. Our house was a cape cod two-story house with two dormer windows facing the front of the house and a circular driveway. Now don’t get carried away this is a small circular driveway. The middle child (that’s me) and the younger sister (who would be the person I talked into being my accomplice because) were running around in giggling anticipation of this first-ever event. The aforementioned boyfriend drives his MG Roadster up the driveway and my oldest, first-to-have-to-do- everything, sister goes out to meet him. In her mind, this accomplishes two things. One she doesn’t have to bring him in the house and two, she doesn’t have to deal with the middle and the youngest embarrassing her. Knowing that I was not allowed to interfere set my mind to thinking…. My little sister’s room just happened to have one of the dormer windows facing the driveway. This was the perfect vantage point to watch whatever was going on with my sister, the perfect college boy, and the MG roadster. While we were giggling and watching another brilliant idea popped into my head. As the dormer window would be the perfect launching pad, wouldn’t it be fun to throw shoes out the window? You know to see if they might notice and I was clearly not getting enough attention. Of course, the shoes were my younger sister’s because why would I throw my shoes out the window. Remember in Part II of “The Word” describing the speed with which my father extracted me from the party? Well, if you think he was fast you should have seen my mother. In a flash, my mother was in the room, the window was closed; the rain of shoes ceased and I was, well, back in my room. Most first older sisters spend their high school years arguing with their mothers; however, occasionally, the mother comes to the rescue and this was one of those times.
Years later this is a funny story but trust me if you are the oldest there is nothing funny about this story or any other story involving your middle child brother wreaking havoc on your already challenging oldest life.
So, like the Army you never want to be the best or the worst you just want to fit comfortably in the middle ---- life could be a dream sh-boom sh- boom