Things that Children of Large Families Don't Know

Last week I went to my first professional conference and networked in crowded shuttles before distilling boredom in arctic meeting rooms. During this incredible one week of solo life I learned plenty. Mostly, flying solo confuses me. I'm the eldest of eight children and I live at home. My family believes invasions are a sign of affection.Which brings me to this synopsis of what children of large families DO NOT KNOW.

Waiting rooms are boring. Those little incurbators are void of purpose when you aren't chasing down a stray toddler or mapping the path to the nearest restroom. They are boring seats in which you sit in.

Packing does not require a full three days of planning. Running a load of wash and throwing things together for a trip is a two hour ordeal at most. I did not pack til the afternoon of my flight and was still ready in plenty of time. I did not make a list nor negotiate how to best pack a car. All I did was throw my suitcase in the trunk and took off.

Baby wipes do not magically grow in your bathroom. Diaper stage lasted 16yrs in my family. I thought wipes were a household staple, much like toilet paper. This trip I had to go to wal-mart and buy a pack. I KID YOU NOT.

iPhones are fun things to play with. I remember being young and wanting to play with "big kid" toys, so whenever my siblings ask I try to lend them my favorite toy to play with. This means that I'm usually reading a book or trying not to screwer anyone with a knitting needle during dead times. Well, folks, the phone was all mine this trip. I listened to 10 songs without anyone asking to play Barbie or Tiny Monsters.

I suck at angry birds. My little brother plays this game when he snags my phone and is now at level 9. I hopped on thinking I would kill a few birds before the pilot became an angry college professor and ordered our phones to go die. Yeah, I did not make it past level 2.

Nine pm means nothing. At home, 9pm is the time that I go say good night to my siblings and plunk down with the older sisters to watch a Psych. I usually rush home from work or cut friend dates short to be able to make it. When I was on this trip 9pm meant nothing. No one was waiting for me and it was the most depressing hour of my day. 

Censuring the commercials is not your biggest priority. We typically end up skipping commercials or muting them due to improper content. I quickly changed a channel after a TV show commercial involving major shooting came on out of pure instinct.

No one cares. I wandered around the 16t street mall, only ate at Chipotle, did not arrive back to my hotel room til 10 and no one even wondered where I was. I have been accused of loving my privacy (guilty), but it was so strange not having anyone waiting for me or sending my texts about how I should hurry up and meet them. 


In the immortal words of people more intelligent than I,
                                 ''What fun is life when you've no one to share it with?"

RUUUUNNNNNNN

We hit the slumps sometimes, but maybe when we hit the slumps we should hit them very fast and not linger in them. This is a poem...I use that term very loosely...I wrote during a dark time when all I really needed to do was get my rear in gear and stop pretending that I control the universe. Remember, it may read as dark but it's meant to be inspiring...or at least hopeful.

I see the lost look in your eyes and I wish I knew the tale behind the wound which blinded you. I see you pull away. I watch you flinch at signs of friendship. Can't you feel the air? Change. Echoes of a delta between the way things are and the way things will be. A chasm rising. Impossibility taunting. They are but red herrings to your run. Ignore the pain. Listen not to the rattling of skeletons as they line your trail. You were meant to run. Feel the air. The starry skies know not of the electricity to come. Do not stand. run to your doom and head not the peril. For at your life's end comes relief. As you die your wound shall be healed. 

Run

P.S. This is written in the margins of Ecclesiastes in my Bible.

The Eldest's Creed

Some choices are not given to you. Ever. You can't chose to be a first-born. You're first in responsibility and last in consideration. Believe me, someone will hand you a broom FAR before they'll ask if you want the first cookie. The scariest moments of your life come far way earlier than that awful moment when you realize your on the highway a-freaking-lone. Scariest moment of my life as a first-born..........

They're mimicking me.

All my hobbies are being observed and copied. I can't screw up. Most people are given their crazy moments in the teen years. A brief period in which society won't judge their choices too harshly. Not if you are being followed. I have to make every choice thinking of the seven little people (yes you sibling who is taller than me...you're still my little sister) who are following me. An oldest can't ever think of herself/himself. Let's take something very personal for example: romantic relationships. I may date rebels, but I don't date bad boys. Why not? Because I chose my boyfriends based on who I would let my baby sister date. Work isn't first priority, even though I'm very responsibility focused. Because my priority is the 8yo bro's birthday party. I cancel work meetings because big sisters do not miss birthday parties. I'm not sure that's in the Bible, but according to any kid its sacrilege to miss one.

Education for children mostly brings to mind the trickiness of teaching multiplication and how much of the scandalous US history is appropriate to reveal. What if it was your job to teach a 8yo boy how to stand up to a bully when you couldn't be there? Or to laugh away all the monsters under the bed? What if your objective through teen years was to be utterly quirky and keep your chin up high, just so the 11yo behind you didn't believe that being weird was a negative thing? Hey, if you find the handbook for any of those just let me know.

We call this the "be careful what you promise" paragraph. And by we I mean the royal we = God + me. I have a princess complex...deal with it. People say they'll do anything for their families. Times of crisis tend to bring people together, if they don't rip people apart forever. Here is my comment to whoever was dumb enough to use the "anything" word....would you really???? I'm going to expand everything. Anything now includes making choices in their favor when there is no crisis. Choosing to be there even when it isn't the end of the world. Anything doesn't have a size limit. Ever had a sibling ask if you could pick them up from a movie night at their friend's house at midnight because they are too nervous to take their driver's test yet and still can't drive? It applies! Or you remember that a family member has been hard at work and hasn't had lunch yet......anything.

It's easy to be there when the world is crashing. The problem is, the world crashes slowly and my goal is to never let anyone know how fragile it is. Even a paper house can with stand centuries if it is protected. What if your friendships were so beautiful they belonged in a museum? Wouldn't you guard against every tiny disaster instead of waiting for the building to be burned down?

You know the wonderful thing about blogs? You can't throw tomatoes at me...except my father and...I now am hiding all the tomatoes. *Sigh* Ok, NOW I'm safe. I believe in preventative medicine and planning. Prevent the crisis now, ok? Do something before you have to.  Soap box is now put away and I better double check on those tomatoes....

When the parents know they are having another baby someone usually feels compelled to buy a cheesy shirt for the first child.

Knowing my family...my Grandma totally purchased this shirt or its identical twin. That is the title one wears for the rest of their life. I call it my crown. I couldn't chose it, just like the crown princess doesn't chose to be born into the royal family first. Wait...do crown princess' clean up the living room every night? WAIT A SECOND.....ok so I'm more like Cinderella with a less abusive family.

Here is the Eldest's Creed

Big people protect little people. Love is a verb. The end.

Rough

Tommy decided to rant in a loud voice about "I can't imagine not having chocolate chip cookies! I couldn't live three days on your diet. You get to eat NOTHING fun." I hushed him and threw daggers with my eyes. How are people that mean?! And selfish?! There is yummy Chinese food in the fridge, can't eat it. Ice cream in the freezer, can't eat it but I did and I will pay. Irish coffee creamer? Nope. Rice krispie cereal? Doubtful.

I walked through every grocery aisle at Target today and I came back with only diet cherry coke and gum. DIET SODA AND GUM. What the hell??? If walking up and down twenty aisles only to get an Ana's diet as acceptable food sounds fun to you, please go away and join some masochistic cult. It was so depressing. I slumped through every aisle hoping to find something fun that I haven't tried. Food hasn't been fun for a while. Dried fruit has sugar on it. Coffee creamer is made with yeast as a preservative. Every protein bar has either gluten or sugar and usually both. There is no such thing as "easy, convenient dinners." It has to be made by hand. Here is how I fix dinner.....

1.  Look frantically in all the cupboards and realize I don't have the correct ingredients. Damn.
2.  Run to Wal-Mart and pick things up.
3. Wait in an incredibly long line at the only open cash register and realize I forgot an essential ingredient.
4. Dash back and find the ingredient, getting thoroughly lost in the process and passing by the doughnuts I can't eat seven times
5.  Come home and thaw the chicken.
6. Clean off every surface and spot 72 bread-crumbs.
7. Freak myself out and clean again.
8.  Mix and slice and saute whatever.
9. Scrub my own dishes.
10. See bread-crumbs in the silverware drawer.
11. Freak out again and clean everything.
12. Serve myself dinner.
13. Halfway through realize I left all my pans out.
14. Get up and soak the pans in hot water and put away the refrigerated items.
15. Finish eating.
16. Realize I'm still hungry.
17. Give up and make myself some tea and read Harry Potter.
18.  Is there a spell to cure Celiac yet????

HALLELUJAH

I am finished with finals! *cue happy dance*  *twirl around the room*  *mimic my Papa's dorky dance moves* *remember my Papa is the only one who reads my blog* OOPS (hehe).

And a bit of entertainment....

O Mama Mia....

I haven't been on here in eons! School does terrible things to my blogging habits I tell ya. In honor of me being nearly finished with my poetry class, here is an imitation poem* I did.

*Imitation poems follow the skeletal structure of their original with the poet placing his/her own specifics and verbs. Think poetry mad lib.

Deep in a Mirror

(after a poem by Robin Becker entitled “When Someone Dies Young”)

When a dancer looks in the mirror

a trickle of rejection lives

in her spine like a growth.

The crook of a knee

is a leg you would sculpt.

When a dancer looks in the mirror

and she arches fiercely

at the chained barre

in a studio tossed by music

and a director's scowl,

she longs for the clock,

preferring the warm-ups past.

Corrections she hears over and over

to suck in her stomach

dulling to hammers, bones

aligned with each twitch

to their anatomical ache.

When a dancer looks in the mirror

she wants to burn fat furiously

and get forgiveness for holidays of fat-scalloped morsels.

When a dancer looks in the mirror

the mystery of her muscles own

memory finds a rhythm

in the sunshine beam at the window.

The rigorous technique

of that spewing

mirror takes a hardening, like a nutshell,

and balks at no

when a dancer looks in the mirror.

Social Disorder

Hello, fellow troublemaker! I hear you wish to cause disorder without doing anything one could task you with. Such difficulty! Through our program's superior search and observation methods we have found the perfect solution for the domesticated pest. Just follow these simple steps and see what chaos unfolds!

1. Find a class in which serious people attend. Academic settings are recommended, but not required.
2. Sit in one place the first day of class.
3. Observe where other people sit and pick out the most annoying ones.
4. Next day pick an entirely different seat where someone you'd enjoy annoying sat.
5. Enjoy the entirely free entertainment of having people scramble for chairs and have to re-arrange their lives due to your genius chair displacement.

Viva la disorder!