Prelude
An Introduction to The Middle Girl
I was horrified. My infant girl was acting just like her. Of course, I hadn't seen her in close to seven years, but the memory of her was clear in my mind. She was an outcast if you ever saw one. You think you or your best friends are weird sometimes? Sane citizens compared to her. It wasn't that she was completely mad. She was actually quite nice once you got to know her. It was her beliefs that separated her from us. The Middle Girl earned her nickname sometime after third grade. We had always noticed how she middled everything. She walked in the middle of the sidewalk (the middle of the street as she got older), she walked in the middle of the hallways, she wouldn't eat her food on her lunch tray unless it was in the middle. When we picked our seats in class, she always sat in the middle. She would not answer any division problems out loud unless it was divided evenly by two. In physical education, our squad lines were groups of five. She cried unless she was picked third. She only used the middle pocket of her backpack. We eventually found out that she wasn't just estimating the middle of things. I actually saw her once measuring the sidewalk. After measuring once, she always knew where the middle was, so that's where she walked. Needless to say, she didn't have very many friends. Delighted as we all were to get into Middle School, she was the happiest of us all. We had only seen the beginning when we got into sixth grade. In our school system, middle school is sixth grade to eighth grade, therefore, the seventh grade is always referred to as the 'middle child'. But we all knew that she was the middle child, no questions asked. We were all too happy about that. Not everyone at middle school was. The older students, well, let's just say they didn't like her very much. When she walked in the middle of the hallway, she took up as much space as she needed. Seventh and eighth grade, later just eighth, pushed her to the sides for jokes both years. Then we moved up to eighth, dragging The Middle Girl with us. Nothing changed when we got into high school, but when she found out that you couldn't have a middle of four, she was upset. That didn't fool us. We saw that junior and sophomore years were the best she had in that school. So now my Amy has caught her disease. She's eating her food, pushing it to the middle of her plate. MGS. Middle Girl Syndrome. Of course, she had a name. A name which most of us forgot. But I never did. I will always remember Mary Matthews.
An Introduction to The Middle Girl
I was horrified. My infant girl was acting just like her. Of course, I hadn't seen her in close to seven years, but the memory of her was clear in my mind. She was an outcast if you ever saw one. You think you or your best friends are weird sometimes? Sane citizens compared to her. It wasn't that she was completely mad. She was actually quite nice once you got to know her. It was her beliefs that separated her from us. The Middle Girl earned her nickname sometime after third grade. We had always noticed how she middled everything. She walked in the middle of the sidewalk (the middle of the street as she got older), she walked in the middle of the hallways, she wouldn't eat her food on her lunch tray unless it was in the middle. When we picked our seats in class, she always sat in the middle. She would not answer any division problems out loud unless it was divided evenly by two. In physical education, our squad lines were groups of five. She cried unless she was picked third. She only used the middle pocket of her backpack. We eventually found out that she wasn't just estimating the middle of things. I actually saw her once measuring the sidewalk. After measuring once, she always knew where the middle was, so that's where she walked. Needless to say, she didn't have very many friends. Delighted as we all were to get into Middle School, she was the happiest of us all. We had only seen the beginning when we got into sixth grade. In our school system, middle school is sixth grade to eighth grade, therefore, the seventh grade is always referred to as the 'middle child'. But we all knew that she was the middle child, no questions asked. We were all too happy about that. Not everyone at middle school was. The older students, well, let's just say they didn't like her very much. When she walked in the middle of the hallway, she took up as much space as she needed. Seventh and eighth grade, later just eighth, pushed her to the sides for jokes both years. Then we moved up to eighth, dragging The Middle Girl with us. Nothing changed when we got into high school, but when she found out that you couldn't have a middle of four, she was upset. That didn't fool us. We saw that junior and sophomore years were the best she had in that school. So now my Amy has caught her disease. She's eating her food, pushing it to the middle of her plate. MGS. Middle Girl Syndrome. Of course, she had a name. A name which most of us forgot. But I never did. I will always remember Mary Matthews.