It is such a blessing to be the only girl among the brood of two brothers. And for a long time I forgot that I naturally possess XX chromosomes and not XY. The worse part of growing up, I say, was growing up with just one mother figure who in her lexicon did not allow words such as ”crush” , “first love”, ”heartaches”, “lip gloss” and the likes.
Being the only girl and the middle child, I was used to act out behaviors according to my brothers’ social conduct. I was used to burp out a whole orchestra of percussions, allowed armpit hair to be as thick as an unexplored and virginal jungle, fart aloud in public and denied it (I know some lovely women who do this), was used to fashion military haircuts and tried playing boyish games like basketball and baseball (by which I was never good at but tried playing them to catch some boys’ attention).
I and my older brother grew up studying in just one class. We’ve been through the same hideous teachers and classmates and submitted the same assignments: only mine had flower page borders and stroke of pinks at the letter edges. Do you imagine us fighting over cut-out pictures especially if our teacher required us to submit 50 kinds of fruits, 1,000 species of endangered animals or 100 examples of ornamental flowers when our newspaper and magazines only provided 25 kinds of fruits and 50 flowers? Thankfully, for the endangered species, we reasoned out that these animals were too endangered that magazines had no more pictures to represent them.
But seriously, we’ve been through a lot together. It is a rule in our house as imposed by our grandparents that if we go home pass our curfew (which was 6.00 pm), we should go home together. Just like those typical war movies tagline: “Leave no man behind” or else we would have our own taste of World War II right there and then only with more powerful air strikes and tornados. With such rule, we developed several devious plans for our “staying –late” extra curricular activities. In just a month, we already consumed all our classmates’ names for a birthday party (even April celebrated hers on October). But since my grandparents were both in their early demented years, they did not contest our inferences.
We both mutually abided our house rule until to the point that my brother dragged me into his “courting” routes all throughout our high school years. While he was talking soggy and sappy with his girls, I am left behind in a wall post having my own poll of how-many-mosquito-bites-will-I-earn-tonight? It’s not that I hated being hauled along, but every time we convinced our grandparents that we came from a classmates’ party means we just had sufficed our stomachs even in reality we had not. Finally, I was freed from being pulled along by my brother when my grandparents felt that somehow, sometimes kids needed to grow up accordingly but there are times that they grew up inappropriately.
The downfall of such arrangement of having my brother as my classmate (aside from the demands of our projects and assignments) was that we have the same gaggle. We were very used to each other that my friends became his friends and his became mine; that I was identified as his sister and him as my brother and consequently blocked our own venture of self-identity.
And my first love was no other than my brother’s best friend. To my own dismay, he only viewed me like my brother’s--as his little sister.
Being the only girl and the middle child, I was used to act out behaviors according to my brothers’ social conduct. I was used to burp out a whole orchestra of percussions, allowed armpit hair to be as thick as an unexplored and virginal jungle, fart aloud in public and denied it (I know some lovely women who do this), was used to fashion military haircuts and tried playing boyish games like basketball and baseball (by which I was never good at but tried playing them to catch some boys’ attention).
I and my older brother grew up studying in just one class. We’ve been through the same hideous teachers and classmates and submitted the same assignments: only mine had flower page borders and stroke of pinks at the letter edges. Do you imagine us fighting over cut-out pictures especially if our teacher required us to submit 50 kinds of fruits, 1,000 species of endangered animals or 100 examples of ornamental flowers when our newspaper and magazines only provided 25 kinds of fruits and 50 flowers? Thankfully, for the endangered species, we reasoned out that these animals were too endangered that magazines had no more pictures to represent them.
But seriously, we’ve been through a lot together. It is a rule in our house as imposed by our grandparents that if we go home pass our curfew (which was 6.00 pm), we should go home together. Just like those typical war movies tagline: “Leave no man behind” or else we would have our own taste of World War II right there and then only with more powerful air strikes and tornados. With such rule, we developed several devious plans for our “staying –late” extra curricular activities. In just a month, we already consumed all our classmates’ names for a birthday party (even April celebrated hers on October). But since my grandparents were both in their early demented years, they did not contest our inferences.
We both mutually abided our house rule until to the point that my brother dragged me into his “courting” routes all throughout our high school years. While he was talking soggy and sappy with his girls, I am left behind in a wall post having my own poll of how-many-mosquito-bites-will-I-earn-tonight? It’s not that I hated being hauled along, but every time we convinced our grandparents that we came from a classmates’ party means we just had sufficed our stomachs even in reality we had not. Finally, I was freed from being pulled along by my brother when my grandparents felt that somehow, sometimes kids needed to grow up accordingly but there are times that they grew up inappropriately.
The downfall of such arrangement of having my brother as my classmate (aside from the demands of our projects and assignments) was that we have the same gaggle. We were very used to each other that my friends became his friends and his became mine; that I was identified as his sister and him as my brother and consequently blocked our own venture of self-identity.
And my first love was no other than my brother’s best friend. To my own dismay, he only viewed me like my brother’s--as his little sister.
