I’m a middle child. Some middle children will say that being the middle child is the best, because you get the perks of being the older sibling, and the perks of being the younger sibling. Those people are filthy liars. This actually happened to me:
   

Dad: Jake! let’s go visit your newborn brother Jason in the hospital!
   

Jake: Let me just grab something real quick. *gets toy gun* Okay! Ready to go!
   

Later on in my childhood / 2 weeks later Jake was saying things like “Wait, we have to keep him?”, “Can we put Jason in the stroller and light the stroller on fire?”, and “Let’s throw Jason out the window. He won’t get hurt because he’ll land in the bushes, and then some strangers will take him and raise him, but they’ll be nice strangers.” I am not kidding. I’ve lived with Jake for the past 13 years. And by lived, I mean tried not to annoy him so much that he actually fulfilled his fratricidal wishes. But no matter what he said, I still was the cutest child.
   

I continued being the cutest child for 5 and a half years, until my sister Maya was born, and she made me look like Steve Buscemi. I remember when she was born I got a turtle stuffed animal.

Mom: Do you want to hold your new sister?

Me: No, I’m busy playing with my turtle.
   

Of course, Jake was the best older sibling ever to Maya. In fact, I got criticisms from Jake like, “why are you always so mean to Maya,” and “why are you so much uglier than Maya?” Maya has also enjoyed criticizing me quite a bit. Once when she was younger, she walked into my room with an action figure in hand. It was grey, and was supposed to look like it was a mud monster, with a warped face and weird stringy extremities.
Maya: (Laughing very hard)

Me: What’s so funny?

Maya: Juju look like monster! (laugh harder and run off stage)

Despite these instances of being metaphorically looked down upon by someone who I literally have to look down at to see, I’ve held my own in this judgemental world pretty well by doing one thing: blackmailing. I recall threatening to tell “everybody” about certain things I’ve tricked Jake about. All I can say in this essay is that my main one involves obesity, invasion of privacy, and a not very reputable act that I’ve convinced Jake was happening in nearby windows. We were young when it happened, okay? Don’t judge.
   

One thing I know for certain though, is that I’ve learned to love these nuts. Really, I’m serious. I’ve learned to love someone who actually wanted to kill me as a baby, and someone else with far below average facial recognition skills. That takes a lot of skill. But in all seriousness, I’ll always know that they’re there for me, and that I’m there for them.