Storytelling 101- Sibling Rivalry

I was the spoiled type of only child who played the cutesy act and got away with absolutely everything. My mom would often fret about this, but my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents doted on me so much that her words were lost in the presents and loving words they bestowed upon me.

But when I was just two years old, my brother Sam was born. The attention was split equally between the two of us, but since one of the few words I understood was ‘want’, I found that I could only want more attention than Sam at all times. From then on, I took every opportunity I could to sabotage him and make him look like the bad kid.

The story that my mother tells the most about that time of sibling rivalry is when I colored on the wall when I was merely four years old, pinning the blame on two-year-old little brother.

My brother followed and did whatever I said when we were younger, and idolized me. I knew that he loved me and now that I am older I feel bad about the way I treated him. But I can’t change what happened all those years ago so I try not to think of how much of a little demon I was back then. After all, we can only learn from our mistakes, right?

Sam couldn’t speak yet, and I quickly turned that to my advantage that day in the playroom. I had my box of twenty-four Crayola crayons, which I dumped on the floor. Sam sat down, his diaper cushioning his fall, and stared as I took one crayon in each hand.

He watched as I furiously began to scribble jagged and curly lines across the white wall of the playroom. After going at the wall for about five minutes, I stepped back to admire my handiwork with a smile. I turned to my brother, who still sat on the floor looking up at me with a curious look in his eyes.

I gave him an overly-sweet smile and stuffed the two crayons in his hands. He looked at them for a moment before beginning to suck on the one in his right hand. Perfect, I thought to myself. Now I just need….

“Moooooooomm!!! Mom! Mom!” I yelled, running all over the house screaming for my mother.

“What?” she came out of the kitchen with her apron on, looking worried and frazzled.

“Sam colored on the wall!” I blurted out, pointing down the hallway to the playroom.

Her expression went from worried to ‘oh no’ in a fraction of a second before she took off towards the playroom to see the damage done by her precious little boy.

When she entered the room and saw Sam clutching the crayons in his grubby baby hands, an attempt to recreation of Van Gogh’s early work etched onto the wall, she gave a sigh. Sam didn’t understand what was going on, but when his hand was slapped and he was taken to the pantry to be given a spanking, he knew he was in trouble.

I could hear him cry from all the way down the hallway, and I smiled with satisfaction. Yes, I know I was an awful little girl. If that wasn’t enough, I repeated this act about three times before my mom caught on to my scheme.

For the fourth time that day, I scribbled on the wall. I put the crayon in Sam’s hand before heading out to find my mom again.

But when I got to the door, my mom was towering over me, her arms crossed. She had been spying on me through the crack of the door between the playroom and the hallway. All I said was, “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, ‘uh-oh’,” she said with a nod. For all the spankings my brother received, I got it ten times worse.

Although I didn’t try to get my brother in trouble (more than once anyway, learning that a trick was likely to be discovered after being attempted more than twice), I constantly waited for him to get in trouble or tattled whenever I could.

Luckily, I got over the sibling rivalry, and my brother and I ended up getting along for a few years before we grew apart again because of gender differences during adolescence. So I guess my point is: try to get along with your brothers or sisters because even though you might be an attention hog or a spoiled brat, at least your siblings will try to see past that because they’re forced to love you anyway by your parents.