“Middle
Child Syndrome”
Everyone is special. Right? Everyone’s unique. Individual finger prints,
differentiated voice patterns, personal perspectives, all that jazz. But when
you get right down to it, having seven billion individuals with fourteen
billion special talents and forty-nine billion important problems, it just
doesn’t mean all that much. ‘Everyone’s unique’ is just the glass-half-full way
of saying that nobody is.
Janie has OCD, Joey has ADHD, Johnny’s still 5’3”, and Jenny – well she’s
in middle school. Jill has OCD, ADHD, bi-polar disorder, anxiety, depression,
and she’s in middle school. Tommy’s dyslexic, Tammy’s anorexic, Carver’s
diabetic, and Isabelle’s tall. Xavier has asthma and Lisa’s double-jointed.
Grandpa’s blind and drinks like a fish, Dad’s being asked to work for the
President, and Evana’s band is recording its first album. Kara can cut hair,
Charlotte’s bilingual, and Roger now goes by the name Random. Jorge is
Hispanic, Sarah’s got allergies, and the lead in the play has a cold. And mom –
well, mom’s raising Jill, Jenny, and Random.
And me? I go to a small liberal arts college. I have four close friends
and thirteen farther friends. I keep my GPA above a 3.0 and my plants
well-watered. I know three and a half songs on the piano. I volunteer. I work.
I call my mother once a week. I do my laundry on Saturdays. My hair is brown,
my bank account is stable, and my skin gets itchy in January.
It’s a stretch just trying to list the things that make me unique. One of
my thumbs is larger than the other. I have an irrational fear of cotton balls.
I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to cayenne pepper. I talked to God once, though I
think most people have at one point or another. I’ve felt the merciless hands
of a panic attack close around my lungs, but then again, who hasn’t? I breathe,
I blink, I live my life to the best of my abilities. It just so happens that my
abilities are moderately decent. Not great, not lousy.
Just somewhere in the middle.
When you fall somewhere in the middle, you tend to slip through the
cracks. After all, it’s hard to see that brown-haired girl buried between Janie
and Johnny. No envious or critical adolescent whispers behind a cupped hand as
you pass. Not to mock, nor to praise. Teachers never learn your name, not for
the honor list nor for the detention one. No one ever really looks at you at
all. There’s never much reason to.
You’re the defense on the field, the extra in the play, the middle of the
curve. No goals, just saves. No melodies, just harmonies. No awards, no tutors,
just piles of books to read.
You never cause your mother to cry. Not even when you walk down the aisle
in that cap and gown, because what’s so special about that? The tears flow when
your junky brother scrapes his diploma, and when your sister gets
valedictorian, but you should be happy. You never made your mother cry. You
never made her so sad, never made her so proud.
No one blows the whistle. No one shines the spotlight. Why should they?
You’re not winning, you’re not drowning. You’re not center stage or running
away. No one tries to find you when you’re not lost. And no father is going to
stick around when you can’t give him cause enough to stay.
Would he have stayed if I’d given him a reason to? A state-championship
trophy, an ivy-league acceptance letter, a suicide attempt, perhaps? Something
that meant something? The point is moot. He did leave, and I had nothing with
enough value to bring him back.
We’re running the race. We’re not fastest, we’re not slowest, but we’re
trotting along somewhere in the middle, and somehow we seem to miss the cups of
water that people are holding out from the sidelines. But we’re running the
same distance as everyone else. We’re going somewhere, too. We just have to
bring our own water bottles.
We’re never the reason for sadness, or pain. We’re never the reason for
drama, or anxiety. We’re never the reason for surprise or redemption or
celebration. We’re never the reason for anything. Before we know it, we look
down, and see that we’ve faded. We’re disappearing.
We start to wish we had problems; because then, at least we would have
something. Something that people can see. We are willing to risk getting lost
so that maybe, for one brief moment, we could know what it is like to found. If
we’re not going to win the race, we might as well trip and fall and get taken
care of. Considering we’re not getting the A+, we would take the F and tolerate
the disappointment, so that maybe someone’s eyes would fall on us. And see that
we’re not really in the middle at all. We’re on the outskirts. That maybe we
need some help too, sometimes.
There’s only so much energy shooting around our universe, as every high
school student learns in physics class. You can’t get rid of it; you can get
more of it. There’s only so much energy you have to focus on other people.
Some people just shine brighter than others, and absorb the energy that’s
there. There are seven billion unique individuals, and not enough attentive
energy to go around. We jogging somewhere in the middle run on our own energy,
derived from the uncertain supposition that we prefer our current position to
sprinting along in front or tripping up the rear, and the desperate hope that
somehow, in the grand scheme of things, our perseverance and self-sustenance will
prove us to be, in some twist of logic, actually the most unique of all.