Outlier

One leaf has to be last. That’s just how it is.
 
When my son was small and I dutifully took him along to the clinic and his size was marked down each time in the Golden Child Development Booklet as being at the 99th percentile, I used to get tutted at. (Or frowned at – depended who was on duty.) It puzzled me. What I supposed to do? Stop feeding him? Drown him? If you exterminate all those at the edge of your measurement, what you get is a new edge and a new lot of items near the edge. Someone has to be at the 99th percentile; we can’t all be normal. I told them that but it made no difference to the tutting and frowning.
 
A couple of weeks ago I listened to someone planning to enter a run saying that he was desperate not to come last and be humiliated. It really, really mattered to him. It reminded me of sports day when my 99th percentile was at primary school. Every year there was real parental angst about coming last in the parents’ race. The only time I run is when I see my bus coming and the gap between me and the bus stop is too big to walk, but I used to enter the parents' race so I could come last for them. Seriously – not a problem. (Perhaps that's because at my school we used to get a point just for turning up in sports kit even if all we did after that was drop the discus on our feet. It was not turning up at all that lost the house a point.) Anyway...

I’ve got nothing against normal people, though I have to say I’ve never met one. It’s just that if you’re the last leaf, or the first, or the one bang smack in the middle, well, that’s who you are.


In case you’re interested, 99th percentile is now well over 6 feet tall and is fit and healthy (or was when I saw him last week). I’m so glad I kept feeding him and didn’t drown him.