secret 11 - it's hard being the oldest

i grew up in a household full of babies of the family. my mom is the younger of two, my dad is the youngest of nine and of course, my little sister, the youngest in our family. now imagine this, you're the only over-achieving, striving, earnest, responsible member of your family and you're surrounded by irresponsible rebels who think there are no rules to life.

there are five and a half years between me and my sister. this means a couple of things. one, i got good and used to being an only child by the time she came along (and no one asked me, by the way--i'd have preferred to have a goat had i been asked, which may be why i wasn't asked). secondly, i broke our parents in and paved the way for her, so things were smooth and easy when she came along.

since it was a family of littlest siblings, there weren't that many rules in our household. i had just the one, "win or don't come home." which suited me, since i was the eldest. my sister also had one rule. but her rule was "no pot in the living room." fine to keep your pot elsewhere in the house, but just not in the living room. and by pot, i do mean marijuana, weed, ganga. that stuff. tho' i don't think she actually had any in high school. that wasn't 'til later, in college.

although i got my driver's license at 14, i always had to rely on using the family car or the old brown pickup when it was available. i never had my own car, not until i graduated from high school and got a little green mustang that we called iggy. of course, things were different for my sister....much different.

at the age of 12 (i already alluded to this in my driver's license post), she was home alone, playing with a friend. dad's old blue chevette was home and my sister, who was freakishly short for a 12-year-old, decided to give her friend a ride home despite the fact that she had never before driven and could hardly see over the steering wheel. she'd been in the car four years previously during my driving lessons and thought, "how hard can it be to drive a stick?" there was a back way to the friend's house, down gravel roads, so she decided it would be fine to just run her friend home.

they hopped in the chevette and headed down the gravel road. they must have gotten up quite some speed by the time they came to a little artificial hill in the road, created by the old railroad tracks. they hit that bump going way too fast, slid on the loose gravel and flew into the steep ditch. shaken, but unharmed, they hiked a mile across a field, directly to her friend's house. the friend's mom was pretty alarmed and located my dad on the golf course, telling him breathlessly that "the girls are ok."

dad finished his round of golf and went and picked up my sister and she recalls what happened as the most severe lecture she ever got. but all he did was put his hand on her knee and say, "monique. monique. monique." in a grave voice. and that was the end of it. it didn't matter that the radiator was knocked clean through the engine and the car was basically totaled. there were no repercussions. no grounding. no punishment whatsoever. she was at an out-of-town football game three nights later with a gaggle of her friends. i was stunned.

when she got her license at 14, they bought her a little brown station wagon. her own car. no humiliating waiting out front of the school for mom to arrive and pick her up in the old brown pickup. no, no, she had her own car. she could fit half a dozen other kids in it and drive across the river and drive in and out of ditches in the snow for the sheer joy of it. she would announce, "i've got tickets for a poison concert in the big town on tuesday and me and the gang are going over there and i'm driving." and do you think that anyone batted an eye that it was a school night? or that there was a blizzard raging? nope. not at all as long as she kept her pot out of the living room.

and although i didn't try to do any of those things...i wouldn't even have DREAMED of ASKING, let alone done that...i undoubtedly paved the way for her. warmed the parents up so they were more pliable to her whims. or maybe they were that lenient all along and i should have been more daring. but i didn't even try. because i was the oldest. the responsible, over-achieving one. it's hard being the oldest.