Life With Eight Siblings

Have ever wondered what life is like for that weird kid with eight siblings?

I know you probably have at least once in your life. If you want to know what a “normal” day in my life is like then lucky you!

You’re about to find out. But, if for some odd nonsensical reason you don’t want to hear my life story, you should probably stop reading now and go back to whatever boring life you lead in the outside world.

Now, my life story, hmmm, where to start? I guess I could start on the day I was born. Naaahh too boring, the only thing that happened then basically involved me (an insanely cute baby) crying, sleeping, crying, crying, screaming, crying and…well you get the picture; I was not a very good baby.

However, let’s talk about something a bit more interesting. Let’s see…how about when I could first walk? Ha! Another great idea! I do come up quite a few good ones, like the time I decided playing musical chairs in the only corner of the room filled with rusty hubcaps would be fun. Or, when I convinced myself that climbing a rather tall fence with sharp pieces of metal protruding from the top would be incredibly exciting (though an injury was not exactly what I had in mind.) or-you know what, never mind. Suffice to say, none of them were thought through, and all of them ended up being rather painful. I’ll get to that in a little while.

Now where were we? Ahhh yes walking age. It was a time fraught with danger! Excitement! And accidental trips headfirst down the stairs, which actually turned out to be kind of fun. Thank the Lord that the stairs had a thick carpet! Unfortunately for my noggin, the carpet on the basement floor was sadly lacking in, well, carpet.

I‘m kind of surprised that I didn’t break any bones. You know what? I think I’m going to add this to the list of things I’m grateful for. I’ll put that right up there next to how thankful I am for my insanely annoying, extremely large family. Did you catch the sarcasm in there?

That’s one of the things I like about writing, you can be as sarcastic as you want and you won’t get in trouble. Another thing is that you can say whatever you want and no one will know it was you! Unless, of course you put your name at the top of the page like I did.

That complicates things.

That makes how many things on my thankful list? Hang on a minute, there’s a lot! Uhhh… I think about two, maybe three?

I had a wonderful childhood! Food, a warm house, my own room, (of course, I let my brothers sleep in it too, out of the goodness of my heart.) see? I’m a kind, generous, wonderful person!…..Sometimes. I have my slightly shadier side of course. You know what I’m talking about don’t you? The side of me that suddenly takes over. The part of me that chased my siblings with a plastic baseball bat until they surrendered, out of breath to a flurry of blows from me. I was a vicious little four year old. If you had come to our house when I was that age and you heard the sound of someone yelling in surprise and pain as I jumped out in front of them and did my best to knock them unconscious. It would probably be safe to assume that it was me attacking one of my older brothers with my weapon of choice.

I stayed away from my sisters. You don’t mess with them and come away unscathed. In fact I often sported a large bruise from an encounter with Lise and one of her many shoes that she always carried about when in the house. This was before I learned that they were not to be included in the category of victims. Sadly I’m not a fast learner and it took several months and a great many bruises and welts before I stopped the brutal attacks I was making to try and severely injure their person. As terrifying and abusive as it sounds, (believe it or not) I loved every second of it!

That is….until two years later when my brothers started fighting back. A plastic bat just wasn’t enough anymore. It was then that I took desperate measures. I said good-bye to my pillow and asked my Mom and when that failed, I asked my Dad for a rifle! I was sure that my dad would pull through and give me the advantage I desperately needed to win the war waging between me and my brothers and I. Rather unexpectedly my dad didn’t get me a rifle, a shotgun, or-and this was the most surprising-even a good sized knife. My dad said that he wouldn’t get me one because he “didn’t want me to have an unfair advantage,” which sounded fair at the time but now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense at all. I mean, seriously? An unfair advantage? They were both older than me by about three and five years! Yup, that’s definitely got a false ring to it. So, I don’t think that was why he turned me down. Not at all. I think he turned me down for two totally different reasons.

1. It was my mom’s fault. She turned him against me with arguments about whether or not he could trust me with a firearm. After “many” debates on the subject he finally conceded that I probably could not be trusted to stop myself from shooting someone.

2. I’m pretty sure he had heard of my tendencies to…….well, you know attack first, apologize later (usually this meant never.)

Imagine this, a poor helpless six year old, I was crushed by my dad’s denial. Most people would have given up. But not I!

I rose from my despair and gained the upper hand in the war with an intimidation tool that worked even better than a rifle.

I was sitting at the table chewing mournfully on a sliced apple that my mom had cut with a razor sharp knife. And that was when I was struck by inspiration and had my most brilliant idea yet! I discovered that nothing was scarier to my brothers than a demented looking six year old with a kitchen knife. Unfortunately my mom soon put a stop to the attempted stabbings with kitchen knives by locking them up in a good sized closet. This large area was soon filled to overflowing as I tested possible weapons. If you were invited to come to our house for a visit and you saw a nondescript looking locked cupboard and got my mother to open it for you, you would have seen many innocent looking household items that I had tried to use as a weapon, like pens, pencils, stirring spoons, (weird) knives, (understandable) hammers, (again, understandable.)

Sadly, the age difference was too great for me in the end and I was defeated by my older brothers. I was felled by a great weapon called tattling. As you’ve probably guessed they were skilled in the art of getting me in trouble, though to my six year old mind it didn’t make any sense why they would tattle on me. I was just going to maybe stab them a couple of times. It’s not like I was going to kill them or anything.

Just by the way, I really hate losing. I usually avoid even saying the word if I can.

Well, it sure felt good to get that off my chest, and it has another good side too. Now you know the truth about how I ended up los-not winning. So if my brothers ever try to tell you that the reason I don’t hurt them as much anymore (notice how I underlined that?) is because they’re stronger and tougher. It’s a lie. Well, there’s my life story so far. Fun right? You wanted to know what life with eight siblings is like, well, there it is. I hope you enjoyed it.

I know I did.

Again, sarcasm.

Author Notes: Wrote this quite a few years back and forgot about it. Shout-out to my naive twelve-year-old-self.

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