A day late and a dolla short, as they say. I originally wrote this April of 2014. It just never made it\u2019s way to the Corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We give these guys their own special day? COME ON! Everyday is a constant reminder that you\u2019ve got siblings – if you do. It all begins on day one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the beginning, there was but one. Me. One child. No attention was divided. Christmas was totally spent on\u2026 ME. There was one Grandchild\u2026 ME. There was but one rule: I am the son, your child. You shall have no other children but me. For I am a jealous son. But parents, being the humans they are, naturally have a general disregard of rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of a sudden your world is torn apart. There\u2019s this addition to the family. Another child. I learned real quick the meaning of the word \u2018share.\u2019 I may not have followed it but I knew what it meant. And I didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually I accepted the status change. I also learned that there were some newly gained advantages to having a sister. Mainly, someone to share the blame with. There\u2019s that word again – share. Only, it\u2019s kind of twisted. In this case, it develops a different meaning. Assign. Give. Before, there were no other children in the household. If that vase was broken and Mom didn’t break it, it had to have been me. But not with siblings in the house. Could\u2019ve been me. Could\u2019ve been her. And with the proper coaxing she\u2019d take the blame. Only we would know for sure. And sometimes\u2026 I could be so persuasive, I\u2019d have her BELIEVING that she actually did it. In those few instances\u2026 only I knew for sure. Some secrets are taken to the grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually more come along and you become somewhat of a gang. Parents are your first structure of society that you are introduced to. They are law, a kind of Parentis Lex and in most cases that Parentis Lex is extended to all adults – especially grandparents. Try pointing your new wooden gun that your grandpa just made you at your grandma and tell her that you\u2019re going to kill her. See what happens. She takes that gun and busts it in two over your ass. Literally. Grandpa has to glue two pieces back together. I never said that again to her. Well, at least back then that authority was extended to other adults. Not so much today. Today\u2019s parents try to be friends instead of Law. We see what that gets us in today\u2019s world. But that\u2019s a different subject than today\u2019s. Today it is about siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My siblings were pretty much the first permanent peers of equal standing that I had. At least equal in other peoples\u2019 eyes if not mine at the time. This is what develops and breeds the bond between siblings. It was us against the world, whether that world was mom and dad or the park across the street. Sure I may have had a couple early childhood friends (Tim comes to mind, who I affectionately named my teddy bear after – Tim Tim) but I didn\u2019t live with them day to day like I did my siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being the oldest child, I was kind of the gang leader by default. It was OK for me to abuse my siblings, but not cool when others would try. I would have to intervene and I either won or lost those fights, but that was what the brother did. We stuck together and we fought together. We learned valuable life lessons together by watching others\u2019 victories and failures. And there were real life lessons to be learned back in those days in the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were all types of risks involved just playing in the park. No Big Brother Safety to limit playground rides and obstacles due to risk factors assessed. You learned yourself by watching little Walter Moore fall and bounce like a rag doll down the center of the jungle bars from 30 feet up in the air and land on the ground in a bloody, mangled heap. That\u2019s where we learned that it was probably best to hold on with 3 points of contact or more at all times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nature had it\u2019s own way of filtering out the less than average intelligent kids. They didn\u2019t survive childhood. Instead, they proved to be those valuable lessons we needed to learn in order to survive this world. Today\u2019s kids aren\u2019t so lucky. The ones who would\u2019ve made those grave mistakes in childhood are now protected by a shelter of safety. Instead of making bad decisions as children and possibly surviving and learning, they have been allowed to live into adulthood and make those bad decisions as adults where now it probably costs them not only their lives but the lives of some of those around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here\u2019s to us kids who survived. I love my siblings. Obviously I\u2019m going to have a more tighter bond with the sister I shared my childhood with than the brother who grew up without the Older Brother Walter\u2019s presence (which probably gave him an advantage the others didn\u2019t have). But I love them both all the same. And I miss Freddy. Not a day goes by where I don\u2019t think of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One more funny observation and maybe it\u2019s just me, I don\u2019t know. Whenever I dream of my brothers and sister, it\u2019s as they were as we played as children. Little Ruthie at 10 or 12 years old. Freddy at 8 and 10. That\u2019s how my dreaming mind portrays them. And I savor every memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A stroll down memory lane as I transitioned from being an only child to the head of the sibling mafia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[359],"tags":[360],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-siblings-day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}