When I was younger I would regularly and loudly bemoan the difficult life I had as an oldest sister. I have MANY stories of how I suffered due to the actions of my younger sisters. Oh, what? You’d like to hear a few? Okay. 🙂

-I was given several beautiful fancy hats, the kind that make little girls feel like twirling and curtsying in. I had one that was my particular favorite. When my little sister and I played dress up I would always let her wear a hat, but never my favorite one. One day she played dress up by herself and chose to wear my favorite hat. Then she decided to go outside and show nature and all our farm animals her elegance. Being a very small child with a very small attention span she quickly forgot about her elegance, dropped the hat on the ground and proceeded to find something else to play with. Our hat was found by our fox terrier puppy who did not appreciate its elegance, just the delightful taste of fake plastic grapes and old fabric. Goodbye hat.

-I was a teenager when my littlest sister and brother were born. Being from a large family in a small town was not always something I saw as a good thing. Many people asked me, “Are you mormon?”
“No”, I would respond.
“Oh then you must be Catholic” they would conclude. I wasn’t this either but usually I would just roll my eyes and walk off instead of trying to explain what we were that would provide an adequate justification, in their eyes, for our large family. I don’t know that there was a right explanation.

-Being the oldest girl I often was the primary babysitter for my younger siblings. Most of the time I loved it and and now I can see the great value in the childcare training I received. But there were times that I wanted to go do things with my friends but had to stay and babysit instead.

-I decided to change the way that I wrote so that my handwriting was distinct and recognizable. It took me many hours of erasing and re-writing my a’s, y’s, and j’s to create a habit of writing them differently. I wrote my a’s just like they look in this current font and my j’s and y’s were curvy at the bottom. About a year after penning my new style I noticed a paper written by my sister….with a’s and j’s JUST LIKE MINE! I was furious. It didn’t calm me in the least when my mom explained the imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. I didn’t want an imitator when I was trying to be unique!

-Clothing and jewelry often disappeared from my room and then later my own house at the hands of my sneaky littlest sister. She was always only “just borrowing” them but sometimes they were “borrowed” for months at a time.

-Once when my sister and I shared a room and a bed we sneaked out of bed after bedtime and at some of our Christmas candy. I ate my piece of candy and then fell asleep. My sister, however did not bother to finish her candy and we were caught in the morning when my mom found a cherry lifesaver stuck in my sister’s hair. We both got spanked because Jillian said I told her to eat candy with me. Yeah, like I had to command her to eat candy. 🙂

Now I laugh at these little antidotes but at the time I felt they were the most sincere forms of torture a girl could suffer and I did not suffer silently but made sure my sisters and parents were well aware of this burden I carried.

This weekend when we went back home for a visit I realized that over the past couple years I’ve gotten payback for all…well, okay most of the wrongs I suffered.

Each time we go home for a visit my youngest sister has bags full of clothes that she is giving away. I feel bad taking her adorable clothes and I know they don’t look as good on me as they look on her but I love getting the “new” clothes. My other sister practically swoops my kids out of my arms when we arrive and would take them the whole of our visit if she didn’t have to share with others. Several times during the weekend I left my kids upstairs and went downstairs to take naps.

So now I feel like the tables have turned and I am the one that is getting all the good from having little sisters. Not to say that I didn’t get lots of great experiences out of them when we were younger, but I think I am more able to appreciate them now.
Thanks Jilly and Liv. 🙂