I am a firstborn son of a firstborn son of a firstborn son.
I was born with a sixth sense that the buck stopped with me. This is a feeling the middle child carefully avoids and the baby of the family doesn’t even know exists…
Most firstborns suffer from the guilt and responsibility only two full-time parents with no other distractions (children) can apply over the early years. By the time the babies roll in, mom and dad are worn out.
Sure if we went old-school biblical I would get a double portion of the inheritance, but I would also inherit the burden of the estate and looking after mom and dad. They realized this of course when I was born, and had to make sure I could get out of bed on my own, tie my shoes, make my own lunch, and earn a good living. Where are the younger siblings? “Riotous living” is the word used in the bible concerning prodigal sons.. just sayin’ RYAN.
Not to be guilty of generalizations, but there are often patterns to be found when we explore those seeking employment in different professions. Ie an elementary school teacher probably enjoys children somewhat? If not, welcome to the most horrific line of work imaginable! I assume engineers like math? What really makes me wonder is how one would wake up one day and say “I like dead people. I think I’ll be a mortician!”
There would be advantages in working with people who are less alive than the rest of us: I imagine they would be more agreeable and not talk back. Politics and scrambling for power wouldn’t come up much and no one would argue about what to order in for lunch.
You can already see why mortician is not something someone with an overactive imagination like myself would go for? I already have a weird sense of humour and the last thing it would need is a push over the edge into “alarming”.
I should do the responsible firstborn thing and get back to the actual topic. All the last bit just to say:
Birth order does make us think a certain way.
What would it feel like to be the baby and be last out of bed, first to the candy, and know that it’s everybody’s job around you to take care of you because you’re “cute”?
I’ve never felt cute. I’ve never even attempted to feel cute. I’ve never really thought about it that much because I was too busy working on things that matter! Real stuff! Being a responsible member of society!
I enjoy paying taxes! It’s the right thing to do! Taxes pay for schools and hospitals and roads and maybe even sunshine! Everything costs money and only irresponsible, lazy babies of families don’t have to pay their own way!
A friend of mine on a job was enjoying a quiet chuckle, and when I asked him what was up he told me he had a young man on his crew who’d just been ranting about the horrible injustice the bank was putting him through: namely he had borrowed a sum of money for a truck and was shocked to find he still owed slightly more than he borrowed when the principle sum was paid back??!!!! The outrage!!!
Interest, genius. It’s called interest.
Banks don’t exist to do favours for no money. That shouldn’t have to be explained to a twenty year old, but I can only assume he was the baby of the family? (I don’t really know, but the firstborn reading this are quietly smirking while babies are making a mental log about how the bank works:)
My daughter Arwen has a rare advantage in that she was forced to help raise her three younger sisters, which is often the case in larger families. People with one or two children look on in horror as girls keep emerging from the family suburban on soccer nights, but they don’t know how it went down…
Erin and I didn’t have to raise them all, Arwen helped. Sure she didn’t like it at first but it’s just part of life for her, and she is such a great firstborn.
Neela’s life consists of “fun” and “more fun”! Chores aren’t fun so don’t do them! She doesn’t have a bad attitude about doing chores because she never actually thinks about it long enough to dislike it! Sure mom catches her every now and again so Neela adapts and makes a game out of them. Winning!
Our two middle girls long ago learned the art of appearing to do chores while watching Arwen actually do them. They will stand motionless in the middle of the kitchen with something in their hands that should be moving from point A to point B until mom hollers or their sisters notice. This is truly genius.
But it still makes no sense to me…
It takes the same effort to DO the work as AVOID it. Dad was right.
Stupid first-born responsibility… can’t even write an article without there being a lesson in it:)
COREY KOPE 