Best. Press release. Ever: “Middle Child Union accepting applications for grand marshal of Middle Child’s Day parade.”
What makes this great is there is no Middle Child’s Day parade.
Bruce Hopman, the union’s founder, believes becoming grand marshal would be every middle child’s dream come true — but they’ll have to imagine the feeling. There’s no parade and no host city for the annual day (August 12) that is universally ignored. Mr. Hopman, 62 and a middle child for the six decades since the birth of his little sister, is nonetheless preparing.
“When we get our parade, we’ll have to move fast before someone changes their mind.” He expects the float will be a hand-me-down.
I called him at his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home and he immediately asked if I were a middle child.
Yes, I said, but who cares?
“That’s the whole thing!” he said.
I called in part because the so-called Middle Child Syndrome is a classic first-world problem. It was created and has been nurtured by shrinks looking to counsel people who have no real issues and would otherwise pay no psychologist a fee.
Mr. Hopman himself pointed out on his blog, Smack Dab, that psychologist Alfred Adler (second of seven children) was the first to suggest that birth order influences personality. Along with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Adler is one of the three great psychologists of the 20th century and — appropriately — the least remembered.
He may be entirely forgotten soon, because the middle child is an endangered species.
In an exhaustive story last year, New York magazine reported that as late as 1976, the average American mother gave birth to three or more children. Today, nearly two-thirds of moms have only one child or two. (Adam Sternbergh, author of the New York piece, suggested Jan Brady’s “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” lament as the motto on the Middle Child crest.)
Mr. Hopman was featured in that piece, advocating for movement of Middle Child Day to July 2 — mid-calendar. He told me he’d contacted a slew of Middletowns, Middlebrooks and other middling places but none would commit to hosting a parade. Maybe this is where Pittsburgh comes in.
We’re named for William Pitt the Elder. That seems no kind of name for a middle child, but it could be he was compensating. Mr. Pitt had an an older brother and five younger sisters.
I figure we could have the parade on Centre Avenue, which goes through the Middle Hill. When I ran this past Mr. Hopman, he emailed back, “This was meant to be!!! I've changed my mind. I'M gonna be the Grand Marshal!!!”
Hold on there, aging midkid. You have a lot of competition in Greater Pittsburgh. Plenty of folks at or near retirement are middle children or once slugged one. You may have had to suffer through a vacation drive to Florida with your parents and grandparents and be the only one in the car without a seat belt, Mr. Hopman, but every middle child has a story.
As the second of four children, I followed my sainted sister Anne, a good and quiet student, and always heard from teachers on the first day of school, “Oh, you’re Anne’s brother!” Two years later, when my little brother Tim, The Incredible Dullboy, followed me, he heard, “Oh, so you’re Brian’s brother. Sit up front where I can watch you.” Dullboy followed me into class clowndom. Three years later came the youngest child, Eileen, who had to live down the O’Neill rep ever after.
But soon even the term “youngest child” will be obsolete. There will be no need for an “est’’ when an “er’’ suffices in two-child families. Still, Mr. Hopman clings to this hope: A Gallup survey suggests that 41% of U.S. adults think families of three or more children are ideal.
Sure they do. That reminds me of what I once heard City Magistrate Dan Butler tell a defendant who said he had a lawyer but hadn’t paid him: “So he’s not your lawyer. It’s like the whole thing with me and Cameron Diaz. I’m thinking about making her my girlfriend.”
No, the middle child is fading like the photo of the McFly kids in “Back To The Future.” The only real hope is Middle Cousin Syndrome. So I texted my daughter to see if she ever felt like the odd one out at a funeral or a wedding.
“Nope,” she replied.
That was my older daughter. I’m fine with just two, thanks.
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill
First Published: July 21, 2019, 9:00 a.m.
