Call me Cordelia. Names are used to protect the guilty and the innocent or to avoid legal action.
I have two brothers and a sister. My sister is an only child – or at least that is how the world identified her.
Nothing special about my childhood. Middle class, midwestern value family. Small city in the 50s and 60s.
My brother, who was about two years older than me, controlled the rules of all games we played. Yes, if I was winning the game, the game’s rules were altered with little notice. Very frustrating.
My other brother, who was about five years younger than me, could not stand to lose. If we played a game and he lost, he would cry and mope. He was a very, very good moper. I was directed by my parent to let him win.
And there it was — it was a no win-no win situation. Perhaps these interactions influenced my ultimate career choice. I became an expert at dissecting rules/laws and finding loopholes (or expanding the lines, so that my clients could color within them).
Of course, I did not sit idly by as my brothers attempted to best me. At the time, there was no sister. I was the delicate girl who needed to be protected (well, not really). I found that I could push my brothers’ buttons until they reacted. Several glasses were sacrificed to gain my revenge. It is rather like hockey – the refs generally don’t see the first push but only the retaliatory push. I became an expert in this manipulation. Yes, I was definitely a mean girl way before such a term was used. I am not sure that my brothers have ever forgiven me. I know that they have not forgotten.
As previously mentioned, my sister was an only child so she never experienced the sibling wars. Same parents, just the delay in her arriving. She is about 19 years younger than my older brother, 17 years younger than me, and 12 years younger than my younger brother. As a smart ass teenager nearing my escape from my small city, the fact that my parents were able to produce a child was rather gross especially as I was in high school and my brother in college. I recall when I mother came back from her doctor appointment and announced, “I’m pregnant. How could this happen?” Smart ass teenager, “I would think you would know that by now?” Definitely not helpful.
By the time my sister began school, all my brothers and I either had graduated from college and were living in other cities, or were in college. When the three siblings returned for holidays, her friends would ask if we were aunts or uncles. They did not even consider that we could be her sister or brothers. Also, my parents acquired all new friends from my sister’s friends. At times they would talk about a couple and all I could say was “who?”.
This is not the end of the sibling wars or the only child sister
Little of This - Little of That 