We are basically all spoiled eggs, right? That is our reputation. Before we begin the checklist to unite us all in our perceived spoiled ways, let one thing be known. The proverbial apples in your parents’ eyes were set aglow in ways never before illuminated the day your oldest sibling was born; but, they were once again equally illuminated the day they realized their last child had grown up and was on his or her own…well, at least we have that.
1. You know how to handle rites of passage
You have rites of passage just like everyone else. Your advantage, though, is that you got to witness your older siblings walk through the fire before you and observed how they stepped. Whatever burns they sustained, you can choose to also sustain or avoid. Whatever new and amazing discoveries they make you now have access to. Your older siblings explore unknown things and the further down the line you are the more cheat sheets you have to get you through your life.
2. Your parents are too tired to care
You, for better or worse, were allowed to juggle chainsaws and light fires in your backyard after school because your parents were too tired to care. The first, second, maybe even third, or more, were monitored far more than you as the watchful eye was gradually closed shut on your adolescence. The others turned out okay, right? Besides, someone is getting married, another is graduating high school, one more will be a freshman soon, and then there you are, melting ants with your magnifying glass, eating already-been-chewed gum off the sidewalk, and wondering what Santa Claus will bring you regardless of how adamantly your older siblings strive to convince you no such giver of toys exists.
3. That which does not kill you, makes you stronger
You, in memory of what Friedrich Nietzche once said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger”, were able to test limits on a spectrum never before seen. You had an ability to absorb this world free of preconceived notions and the pressures parents put on the first of their line. Your parents were preoccupied isolating those before you as you emerged as a nearly unnoticeable drifter not encumbered by expectation, which might have made you the bird with the biggest wingspan in the nest.
4. You idolized at least one of your older siblings
You idolized at least one of your older siblings as a child if not only for the simple fact that they were older. Well, now that we are all older and playing out the lives we had all imagined in high definition reality you take great joy in realizing that the brother or sister before you is forty, whether you are twenty-nine or thirty-nine.
5. You’re sensitive
You are sensitive because you were the last out the gate. You have the least to gain because you were so far behind. You noticed things the front runner wouldn’t. It wasn’t a fair race and you came to terms with that immediately. There is nothing to win, only things to notice and enjoy along the way.
6. You’re an “Old Soul”
You have been called an “Old Soul” many times and tend to hang out with people who are older than you. The reason you are wise beyond your years is because you have been quietly watching multiple life experiences, which will eventually play out in your own life, occur over and over in the form of older brothers and sisters.
7. You’re accustomed to insults
You are quite accustomed to treatment many others would find utterly insulting, even when you are older. Constantly being given torn or scratched hand-me-downs, never getting a window seat on family trips, and being forbidden from ever sitting at the adult table for holiday gatherings until you were thirty-years-old have all contributed in your modest world view and resistance to irritability.
8. You’re not very sentimental
You are not very sentimental because it did not take long for you to realize that hardly any pictures were ever taken of you from infant through teenage years. Meanwhile, your oldest sibling has archived films and picture albums dated by the week until he or she turned eighteen.
9. You get called by the wrong name
You do not mind as an adult if a friend, acquaintance, or even your own boss calls you by the wrong name because it has simply always been that way. Your parents’ inability to use your correct name is as natural as calling an apple an orange…”perhaps it is” you might think to yourself.
10. You can sleep anywhere
You can fall asleep standing up, hanging upside down, on the floor, or duct taped to the wall…instantly. It has always been this way because there was no other alternative.
11. You never fail to stun
You never fail to stun your aunts and uncles each time they see you because for some odd reason they expect you to still be eight-years-old even though you are twenty-seven.
12. You will hear many stories from before you were born
You pay no attention when your family gets together and begins talking about childhood memories. Being the youngest child, your whole life has consisted of random, unfamiliar anecdotes given by your siblings that always end with, “Do you remember that?”
“Ummm…no I don’t. I wasn’t born yet.”
13. You leave your siblings’ jaws dropped
You leave your siblings’ jaws dropped in the event that you display any level of intelligence. Knowing something that no other sibling in the room could answer is a felonious family act punishable by silent treatment and dismissed as dumb luck.
14. You really, really, really enjoy it
You really, really enjoy being younger than your siblings in adulthood…Did I mention that already? You really, really, really enjoy it.
15. You realized that maybe we are all spoiled eggs
Maybe we are all spoiled eggs, but it is through the exhausting energy exerted on those who came before us that made us the laid back, happy-go-lucky, adaptable, and adventurous creatures that we are.
Featured photo credit: Happy Children Siblings via bing.com
