What sucks most about being a middle child is everything. From the get-go, you are automatically the least favorite child, no matter what. Growing up in a family like mine, being the middle child meant that you were too young to hang out with your cool, older cousins, and you were also too old to be their cute little baby cousin that everybody took turns feeding and burping. I was left unwanted and deserted in the ginormous department store of love, and couldn’t even find my way to the exit.

Now usually, every middle child hears their parents occasionally say something along the lines of, “Of course we all love you the same amounts,” but this is where my family differs. I am the middle child, born to a mother that was the youngest of six, and a father who was the oldest of three. So whenever a fight breaks out, you can always count on my mom saying, “Don’t pick on your brother, I know what it’s like to be the youngest, it’s not easy,” or my dad screaming, “Stop bothering your sister, I know what it’s like to be the oldest and it’s not easy.” Notice how there was nobody defending me. This has been going on for about thirteen years.

So since my sister’s always had my dad’s support, and the same goes for my brother with my mom’s support, I immediately turned to the person I trusted most; my grandma. My mom’s mother, Grandma Ellen, has been living with us since before I was born. Up until I was about four, even her mother was living with us, which made us the weirdest household in New York, hands down. If you can just imagine living with your two siblings, your parents, nanny, grandma and grandpa and finally your great grandmother who’s age topped yours by exactly a hundred years, than you’ve got yourself the strangest childhood in the world. This childhood is all I knew growing up; and I had no idea how strange we actually were.

But when my great grandma Jess was finally shipped off (quite reluctantly) to a home for the elderly at the age of 104, and when my parents were finally less stressed and had more time to distinguish who their favorite children were, my middle child syndrome began to blossom like a disgusting, human sized Venus Fly Trap, and I was finally able to appreciate how much being a middle child sucked. I immediately turned to my grandma, who listened to my complaints with open ears and a plate of cookies. Although she too was the youngest child of three, she pretended that she was a middle child and had the same problems as I did when she was growing up (in the 1920s).

I remember huffing my way up the stairs one afternoon, waddling towards my room where I could sit and wait for somebody to realize that I was upset. On my way up, I ran into my grandma who looked at me for a second, and automatically ushered me towards her part of the house. There, we sat at her kitchen table for what felt like hours, playing card games and discussing how unfair it was that my older sister Laura got to pick the movie we would watch today, for the second day in a row. That afternoon, my three and a half year old mind realized that there actually was somebody on my side, and that somebody was Grandma Ellen.

My grandma made me feel like I wasn’t as unloved as I actually was, and for that she will always be my favorite relative. Even after she passed away two years ago, I can still picture my grandma standing on the other side of her kitchen island, resting her head on one hand and holding a milk jug in the other; ready for the moment I need a refill, and she would be listening to me complain about not getting to stay up as late as Laura, while she nodded appreciatively like she remembered exactly how unfair that used to feel.

Being able to relate someone like that was so reassuring, and even after I devastatingly found out that she wasn’t in fact a middle child like I was, I didn’t get angry with her. Instead, I hugged her because I was embarrassed that she went on for so long pretending that she knew what I was talking about. Years after I found out that she wasn’t a middle child, she would still pretend like I didn’t know. If a fight ever broke out, you could always hear her yell over everyone else, “Don’t pick on my Sammy, I know what it’s like to be a middle child, and it’s certainly not a stroll in the park,” and with that she would give me a wink, and walk out of the room.