Writer's Block: Pecking Order
Aug. 25th, 2009 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmegaera[Error: unknown template qotd]
I've always been interested in how birth order affects people, because of my own background.
I'm a youngest. A caboose, as a minister once called me. My sisters are twelve, nine, and eight years older than I am. I am almost fifteen years older than my oldest nibling (in this case, a nephew), and was still a teenager when my sixth and youngest nibling was born. Not quite halfway between generations, but close. Two-thirds, I guess.
This position in my family influenced my personality in two ways. I am violently anti-competitive, and I am a loner.
I was a child in a house full of what were to me at the time grown-ups. It's really hard to compete with grown-ups, and in my case, that caused me to quit trying altogether and to react with upset negativity whenever competitiveness was shoved at me.
My sisters all got married the year I turned twelve (yes, three weddings in one year -- January, September, and November -- and, no, I have pretty darned good memories of it all -- I suspect my parents don't, though [g]), so I was essentially an only child from that point on, which was intensified by my father getting transferred 1200 miles away less than two years later. For which I will always be grateful. The babysitting, at which I am very bad, would have been a nightmare. But because of that I spent a lot of time alone. My mother has said (on a number of occasions [sigh]) that she wishes I'd been twins. I, OTOH, am singularly pleased that I'm not. I like being alone. I liked it then, and I like it now [g].
I've always been interested in how birth order affects people, because of my own background.
I'm a youngest. A caboose, as a minister once called me. My sisters are twelve, nine, and eight years older than I am. I am almost fifteen years older than my oldest nibling (in this case, a nephew), and was still a teenager when my sixth and youngest nibling was born. Not quite halfway between generations, but close. Two-thirds, I guess.
This position in my family influenced my personality in two ways. I am violently anti-competitive, and I am a loner.
I was a child in a house full of what were to me at the time grown-ups. It's really hard to compete with grown-ups, and in my case, that caused me to quit trying altogether and to react with upset negativity whenever competitiveness was shoved at me.
My sisters all got married the year I turned twelve (yes, three weddings in one year -- January, September, and November -- and, no, I have pretty darned good memories of it all -- I suspect my parents don't, though [g]), so I was essentially an only child from that point on, which was intensified by my father getting transferred 1200 miles away less than two years later. For which I will always be grateful. The babysitting, at which I am very bad, would have been a nightmare. But because of that I spent a lot of time alone. My mother has said (on a number of occasions [sigh]) that she wishes I'd been twins. I, OTOH, am singularly pleased that I'm not. I like being alone. I liked it then, and I like it now [g].
