On Sibling Rivalry
I’ve been spending time lately between the houses of my parents and my sister (which are next door to each other.) This is mostly because I feel the need to have a break from our current place of residence, for various reasons, and most of all, because my sister’s house is a blank, albeit horribly messy, canvas upon which I hope to fling my influence. Or something like that. And one of my aunts is opening a daycare, and I’m waiting for the call to come paint a giant Cat in the Hat 
And then there’s wedding planning, but that’s another rant for another day.
Being the firstborn of three, birth order personality analysis states that I be ambitious, bossy, grounded, stable, and focused on education. My sister, number three (and therefore the baby) is supposedly the funny, adventurous risk taker. Someone we both worked with once said “the two of you have your birth orders mixed up- Katie is the one who knows where she’s going, and you are so free spirited.” And she was kinda right about it. Katie is 21, owns her own house (yeah, it’s a trailer in dire need of many repairs, but for one person and her massive clothing collection, it’s plenty. And she freakin’ owns it!!) She knows she wants to be a nurse, she did well in school, was somewhat popular, and her employment record is not six miles long. I, on the other hand, refuse to admit that I’m 28, I’m anxious 98.4% of the time, I’m a bit of a clown, I once flew to Iowa to meet someone (without telling anyone but my sister and a couple other people) and I still have no idea what I should or even want to do with my life. I think it’s because I’m 7 years older, and that by the time Katie came around, our parents were slightly more settled, and were able to offer Katie more. Plus, she’s always been pretty gregarious, and I’ve been on the painfully shy side of reserved. And these have all lead to their fair share of skirmishes.
Being the oldest, I had the parents to myself for two years before our brother was born, and at some point, we had to share a bedroom- which meant he would play Barbies with me and I would trudge outside to dig in the dirt with Tonkas with him. He once stole on of my Barbies and hid it somewhere on the top bunk, but other than that, I don’t really recall him getting into my stuff. Somewhere around 2nd grade I think, we got our own rooms. Then came Katie. We moved to a bigger house, then to another after nearly a year, and then another still, and this was when la petit bebe and I began sharing a bedroom.
Parents of more than one kid everywhere know the familiar shouts of “get out of my room!!!!!” and the following sounds of kid pushing kid, slamming door, plaintive cries. Then comes the yelling of mom and/or dad, threats of belts meeting butt flesh, “let your sister play!!!” But no one knows the horror that was sharing a room with Katie. First, there was the Barney poster. I was in fifth grade, a fragile time in a girl’s life. Not that I was ever allowed to have friends over (b/c I wasn’t), but I had a few evil cousins who would have loved to tell the world that I had a Barney poster. And that I loved Barney. Yeah, Barney the big dumb purple dinosaur. Not Rubble or Fife. So, I did what any creative 10 year old would do- I moved said poster behind the bed. If you can’t see it, it’s not there. Katie took this as the greatest personal affront, and tattled, which got me fussed at. Then! She stole my first gold ring. I’d just gotten it for Christmas, and had never gotten to wear it. She took it to school, and that was all she wrote. I could have killed her. Those were the offenses I remember most, but she was constantly in my stuff, and I was forever trying to get her out, getting myself yelled at or grounded- which is something I will never understand. How could I be wrong, by simply wanting for the little beast to leave my things alone? Parents always want to make an example of you in the weirdest possible ways.
Over the years, some things got way, way worse, things I don’t want to write about, but that the people who know me best know about. There was the ganging up. Usually by George and Katie against me, in what I would refer to as the “Capricorn Resistance” (b/c they are both stubborn ass sea goats. I’m an Aquarius. We really are flighty and free spirited.) Sometimes we would gang up on him- his simply being the only boy meant he got away with murder in ways O.J. Simpson could only imagine. If he did it. We knew about his fake id. We knew about his drunken nights at age 14, while our parents turned a blind eye, and let him not do housework. Well, they never made Katie do it either, and that’s why she’s content to sleep with a mountain of dirty clothes and towels on her bed. That absolutely disgusts me. It’d be like sleeping with dirty feet. We still have our stupid fights- I am a homebody and she is not. She acts like she always knows best, but she forgets she’s really not experienced enough in many things. I say potato, she says “why don’t you make us some fries?” She’s my sister. We get on each others nerves in Olympic proportion. I seem to have adult onset adhd, which leads me to babble and fidget constantly, and it annoys her. She talks to me like I am new to this planet and how life works, and it pisses me off. But dammit, I am proud of her and sometimes wish I was more like her. Not in a jealous way, of course. I don’t wish to be a nurse or ever work dialysis again. But to have one ounce of her direction- I’d be a force of nature. And she can paint, too, which I actually am pretty jealous of (my identity has long been “the artistic one.” But I think my definition of artistic needs changing, b/c I can sculpt and I’m a sucker for anything overly detailed. I’m futzy ) And besides, when you have a brother like we do, you need a sister. Because he’s kind of a jerk sometimes, and it’s nice to have someone who knows you aren’t just crazy oversensitive when he does something hateful to make you cry. Like biting off your Fun Time Barbie’s feet and blaming it on the dog. True story.