The Personality of a Middle Child Kaitlin Renaud

I was born May 10, 1987, the third child in my family. I enjoyed the title of "the youngest" for exactly 754 days (and 3 hours) until I lost the coveted title on June 2, 1989 when my brother and sister were born. I now hold the often-detested appellation of "the middle child," wedged between my two older siblings and my two younger siblings. This position, however, has positively molded my personality into what it is today. Largely as a result of being born in the middle of a large family, I have become a competitive yet compassionate overachiever.

Growing up, the children outnumbered the adults five to two. As a result, I often had to battle with my siblings to get my parents' attention. In my young mind, I felt attention had to be earned by doing better than my siblings. This competitive spirit sometimes manifested itself in unusual ways. For example, when I was just four years old, my older sister Jill and I began an inane two-year-long contest over who had longer hair. We both refused to cut our hair for two years, until finally she chopped off six inches of her locks, thus ending the ridiculous feud. My sister, refusing to lose gracefully, now gloated, "Ha! My hair is shorter than yours!"...