Sunday, October 02, 2005

Sibling Animosity in Cacophony Major

     As I stated before in the blog intro, I am the youngest child of six; I have 3 older brothers and two older sisters. Once again there were pluses and minuses to this situation. My father was a doctor and my mother had a few years of college; they both were bibliophiles. As soon as we were old enough to replace a book we pulled off the shelf, we had unrestricted access to all the books in the house. This included Gray’s Anatomy and any other sort of medical references; birds and bees my ass! This beat any school health course. The minuses were one hell of a lot more prevalent in hindsight. The unhealthy competitiveness was only one aspect. When you are the youngest in that sort of environment, you get bossed around by 7 people, not 2. Also, you get slapped around by more than just parents as well. I also learned definitions of certain words you would never find in the dictionary. Share in our household meant I would be lucky if I got anything, from privacy to any actual goods from this sharing. Hiding was the only way to not have to participate in this sharing bullshit. If it wasn’t my older sibs getting me to do something stupid and either getting into trouble or paying for it in other ways, (Yellow jacket stings do hurt by the way, as does your dads hand beating your ass after you cut u r a nuisance into the family car; that was all I was to them.) it was my naiveté in thinking I could overall beat my older brother at a board or card game. My parents did nothing to stop this shit either; they encouraged and enabled it. My dad felt that he had to compete with his sons for some odd reason; my mom finally made him stop with the mass amounts of corporal punishment. About the only thing I ever could be proud of was the fact I somehow taught myself how to read at just sort of 3 years old. Almost everything past that I never really was proud of at all; I did not learn how to roller skate or ride a bicycle or most any other crap because I was happy to do so; no, I could not let my sibs do what I could not, and be damned the consequence. I envied my oldest sister, who managed to stay aloof from most of the shit that was going on; that was one survival skill I could have used. I was also a problem child as well. All male members of my family are hyperactive; my dad included. These days they slap a nice little label on you like ADHD, but back then you were a hyperactive troublemaker. I had the foulest temper imaginable when I was a kid; this continued until I was near the end of my twenties. The shit never ended when we all were adults either. I wound up taking car of our mom while we both lived in Las Vegas. It was always a joy (NOT!) when the sibs came to visit mom. I would consistently be treated like I was still nine years old while my mom continued in her nice way of tearing at me and denigrating me when she could. To be totally truthful, I was not sad when my father died and only a little sad when my mom died; it was only when she was near death that she finally stopped tearing at me. She and I had a discussion regarding our family. I equated our family to a Feudal English one. Oldest son inherits, second son military, third son clergy, any daughters could be married off for leverage and any extra sons left over were dirt of the earth. She said that was not fair, so I said okay, I am this family’s appendix or colon: I am there, but serve no real function at all. The problem with my sibs is that we are all educated pretty well; so any sort of putdown will never be direct though it will always be condescending. When my mom (The Great Enabler) died in 2003, that was the final string holding us together as a family unit. I used my portion of the estate to move the hell out of Las Vegas to Florida. I my actually visit my sisters at some point, but it will be when I decide to do so; as much as they wish me well, I have one of my wishes already. I can finally live clear of all of them and do what I wish to do. This last two years or so has been like getting my life back piece by piece. I rarely contact my siblings these days because I do not wish to hear their condescending bullshit for the most part or how I need to be raised into adulthood via the insinuation I do not know something I actually do know. As fast as my siblings reached their majority is as fast as they left the house for good. I left in 1984. Since that time, we have been spread out all over the place. In 42 years, I have lived in 7 states in the USA. I hope this move is the last one, but you never know. I have learned from my siblings that co-operation is not always a good thing, recalcitrance is not always bad,  and that getting something done in spite of someone is often faster than waiting for non-existent co-operation.  To sum up all of the love e have for each other, my sibs and I, that’s easy to do. I will bet some are waiting around to see which one of us dies first. We NEVER were the Brady bunch, not at all. Two of my siblings will never have kids, three do. I am the last holdout, but I think that if I have any children, I will say to them that I was an only child. They will be far better off.