Middle Child, Middle Boomer, Middle You

via sun-sentinel.com

A friend has two family members, one older and one younger, with birthdays so close they have their own little birthday club.

The friend cried about it so much every year that he started getting presents on their birthdays to shut him up.

He kept secret score as the middle child in the line-up.

What else did Middle Child cry about?

A Christmas-season birthday, which might be worse than being in the middle.

No one should complain about sharing a birthday season with Jesus. If you do, keep it quiet.

That middle kid friend didn’t mind as much because he got presents on his siblings’ birthday, which bothered them.

Does birth order really make a difference?

Please continue.

Middle children are the biggest whiners, says one expert who learned how to compete from one sibling and how to tease the other.

First born children seem to know more about middle kids than anyone. That’s one person in their life they can lord over. And it goes further.

As adults, first borns still believe they rule the existing universe. An older brother or sister needs to understand that the way they treat the next born determines how close they will be later.

Baby boomer bloggers like ripping into relationships. They say things like, “I chose a new family because I didn’t have a say in my birth family.”

Then they introduce their cat as “My sister.”

What they’re saying out loud is, “If I had a choice it wouldn’t have been showing up in the middle.”

One boomer friend, a first born, is a natural leader. He’s someone you can trust and rely on to do what he says he’ll do.

He attributed his dominance to his birth order until he attended his dad’s funeral and discovered his father had children before him.

This complicated things.

He was no longer a first born. For some reason this wasn’t good enough. It took something out of his first-born armor.

All second borns know the feeling.

On a bigger scale, the Middle Child carries similar baggage in boomer-land with Early Boomers (1946-1952), Middle Boomers (1952-1958), and Late Boomers (1958-1964.)

When middle boomers got hip and grew their hair out, they were copying early boomers. If they turned serious and started paying attention, they were copying late boomers.

Middle boomers got their counter-culture second hand. Too young for the 60’s, too old to embrace the 80’s, middle boomers got stuck with the Seventies and blamed for the leftover crap from early boomers.

Woodstock was a movie. Easy Rider with Captain America? Hippie, please.

When middle boomer got caught doing whatever early boomer did, it was time to grow up and be a man. If middle boomer didn’t pick up new ideas from late boomer, they were geezers before their time.

NW Boomer identifies with the Middle Child/Boomer. Even the url boomerpdx.com is in between boomersea and boomersfo. Call it an underdog blog for overachievers. Or call it your home on the web.

Either way you’ll find a whiff of what’s cooking for baby boomers.

Parting Middle Boomer wisdom: if there’s something bothering you and you can’t change it, change the way you feel about it.

Make a real change and subscribe to NW Boomer today.