Weird Injury Wednesday

I have a bald spot in my left eyebrow. Seriously, I'm so self-conscious about it that I eventually had to start coloring it in with brown eyeliner pencil.

My eyebrow wasn't always like that though. Before my first-year of college, I had a perfectly normal eyebrow. Well, two eyebrows. I didn't have a uni-brow or anything.

It all started when I was just a few months old. Emily decided to hold her baby sister for the first time (without parent supervision). My mom walked into the living room and said "Emily, please ask permission before you hold the baby. Now put your sister down." So being the great older sister that she is, she dropped me on the spot and I hit my head. (Spoiler Alert: I lived.)

That's when the Middle Child Syndrome begun. Every time I go on vacation or leave my bed, I acquire some illness or bizarre injury. Hence, freshman year of college where I lost a third of my eyebrow.

I was doing laundry in my dorm's laundry room, where mismatched socks and random pairs of dirty underwear go to die. While I was transferring my wet clothes from a washer to a dryer across the room, I couldn't see the floor over my huge mound of clothing. That's when it happened.

My foot slipped on a dryer sheet, and BAM! My forehead smacked into the dryer. My wet clothes fell to the ground as my blood speckled the white tile. Thank goodness for adrenaline (and disorientation and slight concussions). The sight of blood usually causes me to throw up, pass out or both. But I managed to get all my clothes in the vicious dryer (because I clearly wanted clean clothes when I got out of the Emergency Room).

I walked back to my bedroom in a daze with blood pouring from my head. People in the dorm stared at me, but no one offered to help me, so that was cool. When I walked into my dorm room, my roommate didn't say anything to me until I asked if she had any band-aids. It was as if I came back every night with a bloody face.

Eventually, I went to the on-campus health clinic because the Band-Aid wouldn't stick to my bloody, now bald eyebrow. I'm now known there as the eyebrow girl.

One shot and five stiches later, my eyebrow looked like some bug had built it's home comfortably on my eyelid, which was really uncomfortable later that night when I had to play drums and dance in the middle of the campus commons with only one eye. (But that's another story)

As you can imagine, I don't show this picture to people very often. But here's my bug nest of an eyebrow.

I called my Dad after I got my stiches to tell him, "hey, your daughter just got five stiches in her head," but he didn't answer. And like every middle child will tell you, he called back the next day. Because when your middle daughter is calling from the hospital, how important can it be?

Just another day in the life of a middle child. Don't worry, I went back to the laundry room later that night to clean the blood splattered on the floor and fold my clean laundry. Moral of the story: throw away your dryer sheets please.

A bad case of MCS

Middle Child Syndrome is a real thing. Finally, a legitimate excuse for my weirdness. Whenever my self-esteem is particularly low, or when I feel empty or jealous, I tell myself, don't worry it's just the MCS.

I am the middle daughter of three sisters. My older sister, Emily (23), reminds me almost every day that she's the pretty daughter. My younger sister, Lily (15), could take me in a fight. Lily is the tallest of the three of us. She is 5'2.

Everything goes against me in this family. Emily and Lily have beautiful straight brown hair and my mom's ageless face. I have crazy curly hair and my dad's circular features. I'm 5'0 and have a body that's half Betty Boop, and half hippo. My DDD boobs are an anomaly in a family of A cups, and I've got thick runner's legs, minus the actual running part. My arms are the length of baby carrots and my head has the roundness of a tomato. But my nose rocks.

Here's a (really nice, edited) picture of the three of us. I'm on the left (wearing super tall wedges), Emily is in the middle, and Lily is on the right. Have I mentioned yet that I don't photograph well?

Growing up as the middle sister wasn't terrible, simply because I have nothing to compare it to.

Emily tortured me as older sister's are meant to. I still have scars in the shapes of crescent moons on my arms from when Emily dug her nails into my skin. Emily is cunning and possesses a street smart I can only dream about. One time, she punched me in the face and told my parents it was my fault because I ran into her fist. Genius. When I was in Elementary school, she convinced me that my parents didn't love me. For a while, I believed her...I'm still not sure if she's wrong.

That's the rub of being the introverted middle child between two loud sisters, your parents don't pay as much attention. But on the plus side, I never really got into trouble with my parents, other than the occasional time out. That was usually Emily's fault.

You would think that I could at least exert my power over my younger sister, seeing as though she is 5 years younger than me. But even from an early age, Lily had the common sense to ally with Emily.

This is how I was branded the sister/daughter who is "book smart," but lacks common sense. I may not have the good looks. I may not be the outgoing, social sister. And I may be the middle child. But hey, at least I'm smart.