Pincess Dye Has Been Bitching, So Here's a New Post

He made me write that title, by the way.

Anyway, it's been a day or two or four since the last time I posted, so I'm giving the people what they want. Unfortunately for you, I'm busy, or something, and "haven't had the time" to write a new post. In lieu of that, I'm going to give all you sexies a paper I wrote my senior year of high school for a PSEO class. There were certain requirements for it that might make it less entertaining than it could have been, but fuck you and quit complaining. Make fun of whatever you want.



THE OSTENTATIOUS LIVES OF CHILDREN



Even in the early years of life, I had known I was different from my siblings, if only minutely. I was preceded in life by Archer, my older brother, and Toons, my older sister. Archer was five years older than me, and made his superiority known. I, on the other hand, made my inferiority known, specifically to my mother, with the intentions of safeguarding myself and ensnaring my brother in my mother’s vicious grasp. I used my weakness as a defense, and it worked astoundingly well, until my parents left the house. My sister, at these times, would often entreat that we play nice, and do something less aggressive, which inadvertently led to Archer stripping the Ken doll and performing the most hilarious dance routines a six-year-old had seen. Such was a typical day of my childhood.

More than my parents on most days, my siblings are the main part of my upbringing, at least through my early teen years. We all, as siblings, agree that our time together was priceless. While our visits are fewer and farther between, we still maintain our familiar friendship, which includes the sporadic outbursts of fights that really aren’t worth fighting.

My sister, being the only girl, naturally felt left out. She would try her ploys, such as implementing a “points system” to see which one of us could get on her better side, which lasted several months and consisted of a chalk board and a lengthening set of tally marks, one side for my brother, and one for me. I, being the younger and more apt to acquiesce to such schemes, felt it mandatory to compete.
When I asked my sister what she thought was the hardest part of having me as a sibling, she responded, “The hardest part of having you as a sibling was probably because you were male and I was outnumbered in that aspect, or because you were the youngest and you got fucking everything. That and you didn’t have to do shit.” She continued her comment, saying, “There’s been quite a few times when I’m pissed off at you, but looking back there’s been a lot of good times. There were no times I was like, ‘You fucking whore.’”

In our time together, we have developed a frighteningly stunning array of memories together. I have been told several times from each of them about the time my brother pulled my diaper while I was climbing stairs, only to have it empty like “an ice cream bucket” down the stairs. My brother, when told during a telephone interview that anything he said could be published, responded, “So, I shouldn’t say anything about the time we recorded our farts?” Of course, he should have, because that period of our lives, including my sister’s, is one of the earliest memories I have of our bonding. This can give the reader some insight into why, perhaps, I am the way I am.

My brother and I, being male, were inherently different from my sister, and therefore had a different relationship. In his essay, “The Disposable Rocket,” John Updike comments on the differences between the males and females of the race:

Any accounting of male-female differences must include the male’s superior recklessness, a drive not, I think, toward death, as the darker feminist cosmogonies would have it, but to test the limits, to see what the traffic will bear – a kind of mechanic’s curiosity. The number of men who do lasting damage to their young bodies is striking; war and car accidents aside, secondary-school sports, with the approval of parents and the encouragement of brutish coaches, take a fearful toll of skulls and knees. (641)

His words resound deep within me, knowing that between my brother, my father, and me we fit the bill entirely. Whether it was fighting with plastic bats, fists and feet, or in a video game, Archer and I were much more violent than Toons. So much so that our parents removed the game “007 Golden Eye” from our possession and gave a calmer game, “1080 Snowboarding,” to my sister instead.

My brother and I had a somewhat typical siblinghood between us. When I asked him recently what it was like growing up with me, he paused before saying, “Imagine the worst headache that you’ve ever had, every day, three times a day. That’s what it was like growing up with you.” He has also mentioned that my sister threw up on my uncle around the time I was being born, and how this action was a bad omen for my entrance into their lives. Wisecracks aside, Archer was grateful to have a brother in the family who was more wiling to roughhouse than Toons was. “I forced you to roughhouse,” my brother admitted, knowing that his influence had a lot to do with my nature as a child. As might be expected, this plan backfired when I would want to roughhouse when he did not. His comments on this particular attribute of mine are that “you were definitely a biter and a clawer

As the topic of rivalries come up with siblinghood, I must mention the rivalries we had. Being the youngest, weakest, and dullest minded, I felt a bit inconsequential compared to my bright, popular siblings. In Arielle Greenberg’s poem, “Boxcar,” her first stanza reads a bit like an argument between siblings: “You’ve got that shiny boxcar/painted Rage-on-Wheels in fire letters on the side/& you’ve been driving for years/& you zip through town on just your own/heidy-ho and I’ll tear you down.” This fits better yet because of the large plastic truck we would fight over for control to drive. Sibling rivalries are nothing to be joked about, because they often end in tears; unfortunately, those tears typically belonged to the youngest of the group.

However, with growing up often comes growing apart. Not to say that we loved each other less; being apart may have helped to love each other more. But as more time passed, the less we were together, and my brother had gone off to college all too soon, especially for me. He had gradually spent less and less time at home, so the change was easy on the family for the most part. We still missed him, but had become accustomed to his absence. When he came home for visits, he and I would promptly resume our fighting and joking.

The same sort of thing happened when Toons had left for college, with a progressive move away from the home toward more opportunities. More recently, my sister and I have grown closer, through several opportunities we were given to bond. For example, the time she made me her “sober cab,” that is to say, “designated driver.” I gained many new insights into my sister’s life after that night, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for much of anything.

Even now I know that there were some things that could not be helped, what with me feeling such an outcast. And according to the patterns of birth order, I was very correct. Based on the article “Birth Order,” the third and youngest child, which is me, tends to want his duties done for him, and also feels that he “[m]ay not be taken seriously.” This was certainly a perfect fit in my case, as in my childhood, I felt I wasn’t getting nearly the attention I deserved, which was far more than anyone needed.

I know I’m lucky to have the friendships I have with Archer and Toons, and I am ever grateful, most of the time. We always manage to make each other laugh, whether through reminiscing or something new we come up with. During his interview, my brother said of our relationship, “Thanks for taking it all in stride. And I say that because I made you put up with a lot of shit throughout the years.” I accepted this because of the truth within, though I know I had returned the favor with my own pranks, like putting old food coloring in his drink to make it taste bad. My siblings and I are inseparable, insofar as we stay on the others’ good side.

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