O Woe is Me and Woe is Thee
First things first: growing up as an only child is not just like growing up with siblings, just with less internecine strife and more toys. Okay, broadly speaking that's exactly what it's like - I have never, for example, had my older brother drop a six-inch locust down my shirt, or had to relinquish Curious George to a weeping baby sister - but like everything else it's a case of what I won on the swings, I lost on the roundabouts. I'm not particularly interested in mythbusting the preconceptions about only children, because we're a varied bunch, but there are a few things about the state of being an only child that aren't really well-understood (or they're pathetically obvious and it's just that the people I spoke to hadn't thoyght about them yet.) Being an only child can get lonely. Siblings aren't exactly built-in playmates (see reference to locusts above), but they're other people, in vaguely the same age group, that generally live in the same location, and whom you know well. They are available to play with. Or, in some cases, to viciously fight with until someone ends up on the naughty step and everything is night. Siblings also broaden your social circle by having their own friends, and occasionally bringing them into your shared living space. They broaden your knowledge pool, albeit often by telling you fat lies (like "avocado is really mashed frog"). They teach you how to share, and how to hit someone really hard without leaving a mark, and in some cases you learn *omerta* - nobody saw nothing, Mom. They will also remember the bits of your life that you forget, or wish to forget, or wish everyone else would forget. Only children generally don't get this. Cousins aren't the same, and neither are friends - the rules that govern those interactions, though similar, aren't the same: introduce another set of parents, and the boundaries of what you can get away with contract. The amount of time spent together decreases. The social circles don't overlap as much. It's you and your mother and your parents. Two adults and you. Except eventually it's three adults. This is where shit gets tricky. When you're a kid, they look after you. It's music lessons and school trips and toys and extra-murals and all the bedtime stories, and pocket money in amounts that make your friends eyes bug slightly, and all the love. When you're an adult and your parents are sliding into the hip-replacement/heart medication bracket, you look after them. There is nobody else that will help you do it. Nobody else is bound to them in the same way as you are. This isn't to say you won't end up carrying the load on your own - life happens, and some people are more equipped to handle shit than others - but the idea is that at some point, you call your brother and say, "Mom needs to move out of that big old house and into somewhere smaller, maybe with a nurse. Can we talk about this?" Those of us who don't have this option are stuck carrying all the decisions, and much of the eventual costs, on our own. Well, that was depressing. Hepsibah, by Friday, 250 words on mispronouncing words.