The Universe is Indifferent

MAY 10 ENTRY: Hidden in plain sight


Wow! This prompt was a good one! Got me thinking... I got the inspiration for this post from an episode of 'Home Improvement' , the famous tv comedy starring Tim Taylor...

Let's go deeper into the family hierarchy, or more specifically the hierarchy among children. The oldest is the leader of the pack, the first one. The youngest child is the baby of the lot, no matter how old he/she gets, the pampered one. And guess who's hidden in plain sight? Yup, the middle child, the child in no man's land.

Think about it for a second, the eldest is always the one who gets new stuff, gets to drive first, has a girlfriend/boyfriend first or in short, reaches all the milestones first. For the youngest, every step, however minute is an achievement. "You've grown by 5 centimetre! My, just yesterday you were running around half-naked!"

The middle child, as I said earlier, is in the proverbial 'no man's land'. The things that he goes through have already been done by the older sibling and do not have the newness that comes with the baby. I remember how my younger sister was always asked "Where should we eat today honey?" The choice was confirmed with my big bro and we were done! Where was I?

About the aforementioned tv show, there is a character called Jill, who is the female protagonist. She exclaims, " It was the same every time we went to the zoo. Robin got to see the pandas, Carol got to see the zebras, all I wanted to see were the wallabies!" So the biggest problem with us middle children is effectively being forgotten! Sometimes I feel like I had an invisibility cloak over my head!

Now, I don't know if this holds true for other middle children, but from the evidence I saw in my sample space (i.e my friends) , this is true across the board. All my friends who were either oldest or youngest children historically got everything they wanted.

I want to put an end to this rambling with a quote I found online:

"This is the 21st century! Is equality that much to ask for? We have racial equality and gender equality. Maybe next up to the Supreme Court should be Middle Child v. the World.

On the other hand, we'd probably lose that one too."