Sibling Rivalry
I am the middle child; people who know me often hear me refer to myself as the unloved middle child. It's not true, of course. Cleverly my parents had their children boy-girl-boy so that we all had a special title: eldest, only girl, youngest.
We were all equally adored as babies, taught to walk and talk (although I refused to say more than "yeah, cat" until I was nearly three, which confused my mother who hadn't been able to shut up her first child since he was less than a year old.) My parents made special points of not giving one or the other more pocket money, or more Christmas presents or a later bedtime (although to this day I would swear that this rule doesn't apply to my younger brother). But generally things were fairly even.
No, I was never particularly close to my mother - we both have a deep need to know everything, and while this bonds us on our need to read every single thing in the house with religious fervour, this also causes a massive rift because neither of us can capitulate on a single thing;- a particularly large, furious argument erupted a few years ago about how big Texas is. Neither of us likes being wrong. We both have hot tempers. And our completely different approach to almost everything means that we're almost guaranteed to clash.
And yes, what with the habitual absenteeism and characteristic alcoholism, my dad and I weren't as close as we might be.
I'm lucky though - I think I got the best of the genes. It sounds mean, but I honestly believe that. If I was given a list and made to pick, I would pick all of the ones I have. My dad's workaholic nature, my mothers easy-going one. My dad's great hair (my mum's ginger) and my mothers skin (my dad had pores you could land a helicopter in). Not to mention my father's sarcasm, my mother's willingness to laugh at herself. My dad could talk to people - charm the birds out of the trees. My mum has done the Daily Mail crossword every day for thirty-five years.
My older brother is a clear member of my mothers clan. He resembles our maternal grandfather, and has the exact same colour and texture hair as our aunt Christine. My little brother is the spitting image of my father - to the point where people in my dad's home town recognize him. Both my brothers have our mother's laissez-fair attitude to working. Both take after her in as much as being a bit of a short-arse (it's ok that I'm not very tall, I'm a girl). My little brother has my father's addictive, risk-taking nature (when it doesn't conflict too strongly with his strong desire to remain comatose 80% of the time) and my older brother has my fathers dislike of being laughed at.
Overall, I am generally quite happy, gene-wise. Admittedly, I got a dash of the addiction, impetuousness and general confusion about life from my father, and a healthy dose of social awkwardness from my mother, but generally, I do ok.
I would NEVER have previously admitted to any sibling rivalry - my brothers would have to actually compete. I outshone them in school and never really looked back. I assumed I still had the lead.
Not so.
My first surprise was when my older brother had his baby. While I adore my niece (she's pretty and clever and tall, etc, etc), I'm glad I don't have one. My older brother - Rich - is only two years older than me. He's twenty-three and has a two year old. Beautiful, wonderful, etc; but happy it's not me. Especially when you notice that his girlfriend is a bit on the nutty side. But still - I'd always assumed I'd reproduce first. That was when the first hint of sibling rivalry reared it's ugly head.
What's more, my older brother, who spent large portions of his teen years crafting 'song lyrics', twitching the strings on his bass guitar and failing to get much in the way of social contact from anyone, never mind girls, joined an online poetry forum. And apparently was quite popular. And he entered a poem of his into a competition, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! It got quite a lot of votes and got published. But it was only in a "best of our online poetry forum" book, so it didn't really count.
Until.
"Just so u kno, my editR [my editor?! Pfft.] got in tuch % it lookz like they'r goin 2 publish my bk Oct 2011! xxx"
Obviously he doesn't actually write in text-speak, but it somewhat sates my annoyance to pretend he does.
Pfft! He writes science fiction, you know. It barely counts as a genre. Plus, his syntax isn't as good as mine, he under-uses punctuation and he wouldn't know what to do with a semi-colon if it bit him.
All this is made worse of course by the fact that his editor will get rid of the grammar, spelling and syntax errors. And as much as it annoys me, he's GOOD.
Hmmm... Maybe I can bribe his editor to take out all the funny bits? Or just sue him and claim it was all my work anyway? If you want to read his stuff, you can. It's here: http://www.webook.com/projects.aspx?pn=RichardJames
And, annoyingly, he's often quite funny.
We were all equally adored as babies, taught to walk and talk (although I refused to say more than "yeah, cat" until I was nearly three, which confused my mother who hadn't been able to shut up her first child since he was less than a year old.) My parents made special points of not giving one or the other more pocket money, or more Christmas presents or a later bedtime (although to this day I would swear that this rule doesn't apply to my younger brother). But generally things were fairly even.
No, I was never particularly close to my mother - we both have a deep need to know everything, and while this bonds us on our need to read every single thing in the house with religious fervour, this also causes a massive rift because neither of us can capitulate on a single thing;- a particularly large, furious argument erupted a few years ago about how big Texas is. Neither of us likes being wrong. We both have hot tempers. And our completely different approach to almost everything means that we're almost guaranteed to clash.
And yes, what with the habitual absenteeism and characteristic alcoholism, my dad and I weren't as close as we might be.
I'm lucky though - I think I got the best of the genes. It sounds mean, but I honestly believe that. If I was given a list and made to pick, I would pick all of the ones I have. My dad's workaholic nature, my mothers easy-going one. My dad's great hair (my mum's ginger) and my mothers skin (my dad had pores you could land a helicopter in). Not to mention my father's sarcasm, my mother's willingness to laugh at herself. My dad could talk to people - charm the birds out of the trees. My mum has done the Daily Mail crossword every day for thirty-five years.
My older brother is a clear member of my mothers clan. He resembles our maternal grandfather, and has the exact same colour and texture hair as our aunt Christine. My little brother is the spitting image of my father - to the point where people in my dad's home town recognize him. Both my brothers have our mother's laissez-fair attitude to working. Both take after her in as much as being a bit of a short-arse (it's ok that I'm not very tall, I'm a girl). My little brother has my father's addictive, risk-taking nature (when it doesn't conflict too strongly with his strong desire to remain comatose 80% of the time) and my older brother has my fathers dislike of being laughed at.
Overall, I am generally quite happy, gene-wise. Admittedly, I got a dash of the addiction, impetuousness and general confusion about life from my father, and a healthy dose of social awkwardness from my mother, but generally, I do ok.
I would NEVER have previously admitted to any sibling rivalry - my brothers would have to actually compete. I outshone them in school and never really looked back. I assumed I still had the lead.
Not so.
My first surprise was when my older brother had his baby. While I adore my niece (she's pretty and clever and tall, etc, etc), I'm glad I don't have one. My older brother - Rich - is only two years older than me. He's twenty-three and has a two year old. Beautiful, wonderful, etc; but happy it's not me. Especially when you notice that his girlfriend is a bit on the nutty side. But still - I'd always assumed I'd reproduce first. That was when the first hint of sibling rivalry reared it's ugly head.
What's more, my older brother, who spent large portions of his teen years crafting 'song lyrics', twitching the strings on his bass guitar and failing to get much in the way of social contact from anyone, never mind girls, joined an online poetry forum. And apparently was quite popular. And he entered a poem of his into a competition, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! It got quite a lot of votes and got published. But it was only in a "best of our online poetry forum" book, so it didn't really count.
Until.
"Just so u kno, my editR [my editor?! Pfft.] got in tuch % it lookz like they'r goin 2 publish my bk Oct 2011! xxx"
Obviously he doesn't actually write in text-speak, but it somewhat sates my annoyance to pretend he does.
Pfft! He writes science fiction, you know. It barely counts as a genre. Plus, his syntax isn't as good as mine, he under-uses punctuation and he wouldn't know what to do with a semi-colon if it bit him.
All this is made worse of course by the fact that his editor will get rid of the grammar, spelling and syntax errors. And as much as it annoys me, he's GOOD.
Hmmm... Maybe I can bribe his editor to take out all the funny bits? Or just sue him and claim it was all my work anyway? If you want to read his stuff, you can. It's here: http://www.webook.com/projects.aspx?pn=RichardJames
And, annoyingly, he's often quite funny.