Eldest children: we follow the rules because we never ever get away with breaking them. NOT LIKE SOME.
My friend Crystal is fond of citing birth order research. Most of it has been discredited, as I always point out, particularly that bit about the authoritarian mindset of the firstborn,* but it’s hard to deny that children tend to get treated differently within the family depending on it. When my sister Sophie came to visit Hannah and me in Boston, she and Hannah both came over to my apartment one night for macaroni & blue cheese** and drinks. As I was grating cheese, the two of them freely admitted that as the eldest child, I was required to do absolutely EVERYTHING, and they never had to do anything, especially Hannah, who was barely even ever HOME for the last two years of high school.
Apparently this bias is not just limited to the home environment, but universal, because for some reason Hannah is able to get contacts from 1800contacts.com on an expired prescription that, in fact, she has UPGRADED ON HER OWN AUTHORITY in some kind of attempt to become the Bionic Woman, and every damn time I try to order contacts from them, my order gets flagged and I get a bitchy phone call*** about me needing an eye exam–which, of course, I have to pay for myself since I’m in California and my Wisconsin HMO won’t cover it. And naturally there is no cheap-ass department store Vision Center (WalMart, Target, Sears–anything!) within 10 miles of my place, so I’m stuck with the place with which 1-800-Contacts has an agreement.**** If $69 is not a good deal on an eye exam, I do not want to know.
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*For some reason, people always remark that I myself provide strong anecdotal evidence in support of this theory.
**Thanks to Aaron for the recipe. It is DELICIOUS.
***Actually, she was very pleasant, and should probably not be held responsible for whatever red flags my name raises with their computer system, but I am a cranky person.
****”Site for Sore Eyes.” There’s a confidence booster.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I am also an oldest child (doppelganger!) and my little brother just pretty much broke my parents in terms of school work and what have you. He got away with so much! He got paid for his grades! I got “We just expect you to do your best because it’s your best unless it’s less than an A in which case it is clearly not your best.”
June 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Cyn: Hannah also got PILES of Barbies, which were totally forbidden to me and of which Sophie only had a couple from birthday parties and whatnot. She did shave the head of one of them and make it into a militant lesbian while I was going through my baby dyke phase in high school, though.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
I can almost always tell when someone is a younger, especially *youngest*, sibling because, invariably, they always remind me of my brother, my mother, and my 2 youngest cousins (all, obviously, the youngest in their families). Because they (almost always) are convinced that they’re the funniest, most charming person in whatever room they’re in — and (almost) everyone in the room is (almost always) convinced of same and lets them get away with murder. My mother keeps remarking about how i turned out to be so responsible while she complaining about my brother’s fiscal irresponsibility YET still enabling him by loaning him money all the time. Where’s my money, Mom??
June 12th, 2007 at 8:07 am
I haven’t seen these studies your friend speaks of, but Sarah and I are both eldest rule followers, and both our younger brothers pushed the rule limit as far possible. My key to the house? A wrapped Christmas present my freshman year of high school. My brother’s? Oh yeah, so long as you’re breaking curfew in Jr. High school, here’s a key so you don’t wake us up. Or so goes my side of the story.
June 12th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
See, my family is sort of oddly split. My older brother was the serious rule breaker — staying out way way after curfew and not letting anyone know where he was, bringing over friends who set fire to things and possibly stole, etc. etc. My mother became the disciplinarian in this case.
My younger brother didn’t break rules too often, per se, but got a lot of flak from my father for not getting good enough grades or working hard enough in school in general.
Me, the middle child, basically didn’t do much wrong, did well enough in school and didn’t get disciplined by either parent.
All 3 of us, in any case, turned out alright. Go figure.
June 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
chris: Hmm. While I do have something of an intrafamilial reputation for responsibility (although my sister thinks I am some kind of crazy compulsive shopper for electronics), I suspect that my name might also come up if you asked people to name the most histrionic Gathkinson. :p
marc: I think my rule-following was definitely amplified by a) us living in the way-out country, and b) me not having a car or, for that matter, c) a driver’s license.
carly: I guess I failed to mention my foray into juvenile delinquency, which involved both a shoplifting arrest and a suspension for inflammatory pamphleteering. Erm.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Hannah upgraded her own prescription? I think she gets this from her mother. Her mother, who kept forgetting to send back the Science Fiction Book Club response cards and then kept making me send back the books they sent until they finally gave her the “special membership” where they just send the catalog and only send a book if you ask for it.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I think it’s quite interesting to see who ends up in relationships. My sister, the eldest ended up marrying a guy who was the youngest. I am the youngest, and my boyfriend was the elder.
It makes for a nice balance. I am sure my sister would say I “got away with things” but, I wasn’t really a rule breaker. My mom’s theory is that I saw how my sister got better privileges for keeping in line, so I did the same.