I was an
only child for almost seven years; seven quiet and comfortable years, at least for
me. I was a very loud child. I seldom shut my mouth and could talk for hours
about pretty much anything. I used to sing to people on the aeroplane, talk to
doctors, assuring them that they couldn’t get anything past me and anyone who
visited our house was in for a very long night of constant interrogation. Recently,
my dad was chatting to one of his old friends and he looked at me and said, “She’s
not talking”. He met me once, when I was two, and I talked non-stop for three
hours.
In response,
my dad looked around at me and shrugged his shoulders, “She doesn’t talk much
anymore”. It’s not entirely true; I do have my occasional rants and once I get
comfortable around someone, I talk constantly, but my days of chatting to
perfects strangers are long gone. As I got older, I gradually became quieter
and quieter, and the bullies in Junior Infants helped me along with that, as
well as some of the teachers. I don’t blame them - I did sometimes find myself
drawing absently on tables and become absorbed in what accounted for elaborate daydreams
in my childlike mind, but they didn’t deal with it too well. Misdemeanour
equalled punishment, and getting points docked from my ‘table’ didn’t help my
case with my fellow students.
So, at some
point during my boisterous childhood, my parents figured, hey, look at what our
genes did the first time, maybe it’ll turn out just as good the second time. My
agreement on that changes from day to day, but I guess my brother is OK. He’s
good at math, having a larger dose of my dad’s genes than I, and he’s just
plain smart, beating me at chess smart.
I mean, in
some ways he’s like me. Try the ‘never shuts up’ part. He likes Pokémon too,
although his career plans are more realistic than mine were at his age. He
wants to make chocolate bars and employ the members of his family so that he
doesn’t have to pay them. It makes perfect sense to him, but I, having been
recently dosed with copious amounts of Junior Cert Business Studies, know that
people have pesky things like ‘rights’ and ‘trade unions’, and the fact that
not paying employees equals slave labour. Still, when he regales us with his trusty
business plan at the dinner table, I keep my mouth shut, because that’s what
big sisters do.
I was a cool
big sister too, in the days when he hero-worshipped me and wooed me for the use
of my DS and a Pokémon game, even if he didn’t know how to work either. I
provided him, grudgingly, with the basic information that every future gamer
needs. Pokémon, Mario and, as of the 11/11/11, Skyrim. Do me a favour and don’t
abbreviate that.
Of course
now, I find myself in the depths of the ‘I’m not related to her’ stage of our
frequently shaky relationship. I’m treated with aloofness, scorn, and what I
like to think of as slight awe, or that could just be a glare; I tend to lean
toward the former.
Recently, my
brother learned to ride a bike. It took him about two hours and since I’ve
shortened the actual time that it took me
to learn to a conveniently abridged version. Now he’s a big man around the
estate, riding with some kids from the larger estate up the road. It’s like
going from being a small town boy to a city guy, the kind who can elbow people
politely. I had a crazy bike stage too, where I spent all day just cycling in a
circle, from my garden around the green area along a path and back to my
garden. I was intent on becoming fit, even though I ran for about an hour every
day on top of cycling endlessly, and I swore to myself that I’d eat my carrots
and stop putting sugar on my cornflakes. Then I got a PlayStation 3, and other
plans kind of took a backseat.
Oh, and the
latest craze with Cathal is ‘a phone’ which was followed quickly by, wistful,
statements of desire for a laptop. I had to wait twelve years before getting a
really old one, and no brother of mine gets to jump ship and score one before
he’s at least ten. Good thing the Internet is so ‘dangerous’ today, he’ll have
to be really mature before he gets in on it.
Despite all
the shouting matches and the constantly on-going fights about nothing in
particular, I love my brother. He’s blood, so he gets big sister protection
from kids older than him but younger than me, even kids older than me if I have
to. He gets a cocked hip and a half-threatening lean against the fence if
anyone messes with him, and failing that a sharp word and a subtle involvement
of their parents, who are so mortified they sort the problem out for me, even
if in a vaguely indignant manner. I love diplomacy.
My brother
is cooler than I was at this age, and benefiting from older sibling protection
that I didn’t have. I know what it feels like to be teased and to have no older
sibling to run to for help in dealing with other kids. Despite what they think,
adults can’t solve everything when it comes to kids beating on other kids, and
it can sometimes be worse to go running to a parent. Get an older sibling,
however, and that’s OK. That isn’t ratting, because they’re in on the game, and
they can play better that the small time bullies. I like to think that I can
play too, and if I couldn’t I’d learn, because I’m a big sister. I have a
reputation to uphold.
©EmmaTobin 2012
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