One and done

If you were to ask me, yes I would have loved to be the only child.

June 06, 2020 02:34 pm | Updated 02:34 pm IST

Illustration: Sahil Upalekar

Illustration: Sahil Upalekar

You know who I envy? My friends who are only children. Who aren’t weighed down by an annoying, uncool, pesky brother or sister. Who don’t have to fight over the last slice of pizza with someone. Who don’t have to argue over who gets to control the remote when watching television. Who don’t have to hide in the bathroom when they need some alone time. I am also jealous of my friends who do have a brother or sister but were lucky enough to be born second in line. If you’re going to have a sibling, isn’t it better to be the younger one? Unless you’re royalty or something, because then you’ll never be King or Queen and get to knight people or order someone you like sent to the dungeons. Though I guess that doesn’t happen too much these days.

Not cool

If you think being the first born is amazing, here are five reasons why it isn’t.

1. ‘We expected better from you’ is something second borns NEVER have to hear. Parents, teachers and all other collective boring grownups like to dump their collective expectations on the shoulder of the first born. So, we’re expected to be super well-behaved, mature, responsible and careful at all times. This means that if your younger cousins are throwing water balloons at people from the terrace, you’re meant to stop them, not join in.

2. ‘He/She’s younger than you. Let it go.’ No matter how awful a thing your younger brother has done to you, you have to forgive him. Whether they threw a badminton racket at you and broke your front teeth, cut some of your hair off when you were sleeping or taught the dog to pee on your side of the bed. It’s always ‘Okay, okay. He’s still young, he’ll get better as he grows older.’ It’s been nine years, and there’s still NO improvement in the pesky bother. I mean brother. Same thing really.

3. ‘You should set a good example’ This almost always follows the ‘He’s younger than you, let it go.’ As though whatever awful thing your sibling has just done is YOUR fault. Of course, if they do something amazing, it’s because they learned that from your parents, not from you. You just can’t win this game, peeps.

4. ‘He’s only following you everywhere because you’re his hero.’ Yeah, but he’s my arch nemesis. I don’t want him hanging around me all the time. Plus, he’s just following me so he can be a snoop and a snitch and gather dirt that he can blackmail me with.

5. ‘It can’t have hurt that much. He’s so small!’ Oh really? Have you ever had him sit on your stomach and jump up and down till you agree to watch what he wants to watch? I didn’t think so! Let’s arrange that and see if you think it still can’t hurt ‘that much’.

I will admit one thing though, all our fighting and yelling sure does help pass the time during this lockdown.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.