On Sale Today: Sibling Rivalry

As the oldest of five (me and four sisters) I learned early to assert myself over those who are both younger and more impressionable than me.  Sometimes dominance was about securing as much of some limited resource (think parent time) as I wanted.  Sometimes it was about enforcing behaviors, like staying the hell away from my stuff, that made my life easier.  And sometimes it was just about seeing if I could make the littler ones do things like bite themselves (true story).  But I'm older now.  My life is well established and I don't have any need to press my 1012 day advantage.  I don't.

But, apparently my sister does.  My oldest sister, Hillary, is in labor right now, and Megan is not, and I KNOW she did it just to rub it in.  Was her due date before Megan's?  Yes, it was.  Has she done everything she could to help her go in to labor?  Yeah, she did... so what?

The two of us have a long history of competition.  Our family vacations were all taken in the car, and the trips quickly devolved in to the two of us trying to get the other in to trouble.  Of course, the other siblings joined in this competition when they were old enough, but Hil and I were the league founders and rule enforcers.  Usually the games would begin when one party innocently poked, leaned against or generally touched the other person in any way.  Touching on a car trip was a serious transgression and was not an act to be forgiven.  No, forgiveness was never on the table.  A gauntlet was on the floor and there was only one way to respond.  "[party #2] IS TOUCHING ME!"  And there is only one way to answer such an accusation, "[party #1] TOUCHED ME FIRST!" 

The war was in full swing now.  Spiteful pokes would fly back and forth, and each one accompanied by a shrill battle report of who had, in fact, just touched whom.  The winner of this first battle was whoever the parents blamed (when my parents started scolding both of us it was more about who was admonished first), and I must admit that, as the oldest, this was not my favored round.  The second phase was a gear change from a shooting war to a cold one.  Fingers hovered millimeters from noses, faces were made and so was every attempt to silently annoy the other by doing anything BUT touching.  The goal of the standoff was to get the other party to report a false positive to the parents, proving to all in the car how unreliable the others reports of touching truly were.  This is where my age started to hand me the advantage.

Phase three of the battle was where I could use my age as a bludgeon and get a real lead in this sibling conflict.  Phase three was much more nuanced than either of the first two, because the battle was no longer about playing your opponent, but was instead about playing the parents.  At some point in this drawn out Vietnam of who touched who, the parents would switch their scorn from the person who had provably touched the other to the person who was reporting the touching.  I could usually see this transition coming a mile away, and could set brilliant traps that my less salty opponent would joyfully leap in to.  It was here, in phase three, where I would declare my decisive victories.

All through our lives we were bickering about who's friends belonged to who and what CD was in who's room.  The competition slowed down during our college years, but family reunions could sometimes still pull it out of us.  It was never about hating each other (at least I hope it wasn't), more a constant test of who was the Smith family alpha, and Hillary always gave as good as she got... but if it was a race I won.  Just kidding!  ...but seriously.

{Ok, ok... I am going to take off my big brother hat for just a minute and say, in plain language, that I am really excited for Hillary and Eric.  Their daughter is the cutest kid I've met and their son will be amazing too.  I wish her all the best, and I hope she gets the birth experience that she's worked so hard for.  I'm rooting for you Hil!}

Best of luck to the Marshall family.  And to our little mini-Mart:  Beware!  All your cousins are older than you!

edit: apparently putting something in carrots means it's HTML and it won't show up... using [ ] now.