January 19, 2008

Do something nice for your oldest child today.

OK, I promised a post this week on my mode of transportation in high school, along with a short essay on why oldest children are often deprived compared to their younger siblings. I've spent some time this week looking through pictures to see if I could find my car from high school, but I could not. Oh wait . . . not my car. My parents car that they let me drive in high school. They made sure to tell me that several times a week and this plays an important part into my short essay that will come later.

The car I drove in high school was a 1988 Ford Escort . . . wait for it . . . station wagon. That's right. I drove a station wagon. Classy, I know. The back hatch, however, did prove to be useful when I needed to get more than 5 people somewhere and we only had my car . . . not that I ever tried that (wink, wink). I will say that it was usually a mess. And by a mess, I mean trashed. My car now is pretty messy, but it'll never be as bad as it was when I was in high school. When I cleaned it out before college, I found things that I had been missing for over a year. If someone parked next to my car in a parking lot, they probably would have assumed that it belonged to a homeless person who was living out of it. However, this was nothing compared to my room . . . that's another post for another time.

The best part of the car might possibly have been the fact that there was no CD player, no tape player and the radio was stuck on AM sports radio. Nice, huh?

At this point, I just spent a lot of time writing about the tragedy of being an oldest child and how gypped I was compared to my sister and ESPECIALLY compared to my 18-year-old brother . . . it's kind of like my brother and I grew up in the same house, but totally different homes. But I erased it because I felt bad whining about what I didn't have when I really was given a lot compared to many people. My parents are extraordinarily generous and have given graciously and liberally and I really shouldn't complain about them. A lot of what we have and of what Jack has is because of the generosity of all of his grandparents. It just that I'd be lying if I didn't say that it hurts a little to compare my experience with that of my siblings. Maybe that should just teach me not to compare.

I will just leave you with this: In my case, there are A LOT more advantages to being the youngest than there are the oldest. Kyle is an oldest too. Lucky for Jack, I think we'll always be pretty sensitive to his feelings about being firstborn.