Stealer’s Wheel released a surprise hit, Stuck in the Middle With You” in 1972. It was a surprise because Gerry Rafferty and his bandmates used the song to parody Bob Dylan in vocals and lyrics on a lark.
Well, it was a hit. It is played on classic rock stations, and it was also featured in the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction.
I’ve spent my life in numerous states of middle, but I didn’t feel stuck. I made the best of most of them.
I’m middle aged, and I turned 60 today, so I’m on the downhill slide of that age group. As long as I’m healthy, the remaining middle-aged years should be fun.
The middle thing has been a story of my life: middle child, an interloper among neighborhood and school groups, and middle management to name a few. I’m even on the cusp of two generations (baby boomers and generation X).
Navigating through all that middle, I stood out in ways I was comfortable with although I wasn’t a big man on campus. I think my astrological and Chinese zodiac signs, Leo the lion, and the dragon respectively allow me to maintain an “I meant to do that” air in awkward moments.
Those who know me and also know a bit about those zodiac signs are probably nodding and saying to themselves, “it’s starting to make more sense.”
I’m also a Monday’s child (…is fair of face), but that one never landed well for me. Having a small chin, brown eyes, covered with fur, and a large nose with prominently asymmetrical nostrils are all consoled by reminding myself (as Meatloaf sang) two out of three ain’t bad.
My Uncle Hal, who had volumes of books to cross reference your day of the week when you were born, and the moons and planets in place under your zodiac sign, enjoyed sitting down with family members to connect the zodiac dots to see if they accurately reflect who a person is.
He once told me, “The Virgo moon in Leo makes sense because you’re an oxymoron: an accountant with a personality.”
A little bit of one, and a little bit of the other.
Let’s discuss some of my middles.
Some baby boomers believe 1964, the last year if the baby boom, doesn’t count. I’m also too anachronistic for Generation X.
There is a limbo label for some of us named generation Jones (1954-1965) given for the later subset of baby boomers geared more toward material wants, young people who were too young to be drafted, and were part of the television-viewing era where color TVs and TVs in a household were the norm by a vast majority.
I was medium talent in sports and deemed more useful for my knowledge of football strategy and trivia than my actual on-field execution. I could hit hard, but I was too slow to be anything other than a strong safety in the defensive backfield, and too small when I played linebacker.
I was middle distance in track – 400- and 800-meter races.
In choir, growing up getting secondhand cigarette smoke from two chain-smoking parents in the closed window house all winter, and on drives to family visits, stores, and restaurants, I landed as a baritone. I had too much secondhand smoke for hitting tenor notes, and despite the misnomer that cigarettes deepen your voice, the smoke hurt my lower range.
I can, at 60, hit tenor notes, and belt a nice falsetto when needed although I couldn’t as a teenage boy.
I was, nonetheless, a good singer and actor, so my time spent in choir and theatre was fun, but being spread among a variety of extracurricular activities among a student body full of kids who tended to stay in their largest groups made me the interloper among every group.
Most of the people among my activities, also including yearbook staff and the quiz show team, didn’t understand nor associate with most of the other people I knew in other groups.
I lived in a lakeside village that was known for its eventually closed and derelict amusement park, and the best place to buy and sell pot. I had middle and upper middle class summer cottage friends in the summer. I did not snub the stoners, on the other hand, who were mostly year rounders like I was and nice people who ate a lot of salty and sugary snacks and ranged in familial wealth from haves to have-nots (mostly the latter).
Recessions didn’t affect my family because my father was a printer and my mother made rubber parts for catheters. We got by in the middle of the stagflation of 1973-1980. We ate meat for almost every meal while some kids had eggs for their protein, but my parents only bought late model cars and we lived in a 950-square-foot home.
The village’s kids and adults liked distinct parts of my sense of humor, and everyone loved the voices and mannerisms I could pull ranging from neighbors young and old all the way to the celebrities of the era.
This was handy for giving the people what they wanted, but I had to learn when it was time to scoot to avoid wearing out my welcome. Plus… I didn’t want to smoke pot with most of the kids.
Hungry, tired, and paranoid are three things I didn’t want to be because I already had a big appetite, operated on 5-6 hours of sleep, and I was paranoid without cannabis in my brain cells.
I’ve spent the last 26 years in various-sized operations at middle management positions.
I have the outgoing personality for conversation with almost anyone in any environment, but I don’t run with a large circle of friends you see in those table-for-16 social media posts that read “shenanigans.”
If I’m in a group photo it’s usually business or family.
With this said, I never felt lonely through all these years. I always assumed - moving often as an adult and changing bases in the Air Force, then changing employers more often than the average bear – each distinct group I belonged to (loosely) liked almost as much about me as they didn’t.
I’m comfortable, not stuck, in the middle of anything. I just try to figure out – like an egg timer between 5 and zero – when that group thinks I’m done.