Being the youngest in the family

The other day I heard two kids arguing over whose life was worse. They were obviously brothers, because the bigger one was whining about how spoilt the little one was, and how being the oldest was so much more difficult… so I quickly sidled up to the younger one and offered my help.
“Let's take him out,” I suggested in a clandestine whisper, “I reckon I'm strong enough to hold him down while you hit him.” The boy looked at me with alarm in his eyes, then back at his older brother. In a split second the two of them grabbed one another's hands and scampered away as fast as their little legs could carry them.

I'm not embarrassed. If I can score a point for the 'Youngest in the family' club then I won't hesitate to do it. We have to stick together, us 'Youngests', we've had it hard enough already.

No come on, really. I can hear all you 'middle children' leaping to your feet to protest, probably complaining bitterly about how hard you've had it and how us 'Youngests' got spoiled and favourited and molly-coddled and blah blah blah…

No really I'm serious, I can actually hear you. Sit down and give the youngest a chance to say something for once in your lives, will you?

Let's get this out in the open, shall we? LIFE IS NOT BETTER FOR THE YOUNGEST KID IN THE FAMILY! Really, it wasn't, isn't and never will be!

Yes I agree, we youngest ones might have gotten to go on an extra family trip with mom and dad after you guys had left home, probably to some flower show or historical mine tour or something equally riveting. And maybe, just maybe, we got to have our own bedrooms....

But do you really think that bore any weight on the scales of justice in comparison to the trauma we went through? Yes trauma. T.R.A.U.M.A. I bet you it hasn’t even crossed you mind, has it?

I'm not talking about simple things, like always getting the smallest pork chop, or having all our sweets stolen whilst we were asleep (bedtime is 8pm for the youngest), or being called 'Poppet' by mom and 'Poopants' by our older siblings….even at the age of 27.

I'm not even talking about having to wear the worn-out, hand-me-down clothing of our older brothers AND sisters …. including that dreaded bottle-green, bubbly, lycra swimming costume (to this day I despise swimming in public …) In fact if I think about it, wearing hand-me-downs is a 'scarred for life' subject all of its own, isn't it? I mean how do people still recognize that I am a youngest child? Why is it that at just over 40 years of age, people are still giving me their hand-me-down clothes? Worse yet, why do I still accept them gladly, with a warm buzz of excitement filling my heart?

“But you youngest children had it so easy,” I hear the middle and oldest-born taunt, “We had to be the pioneers, all you had to do was follow in our footsteps…”
True, true. But from my experience they were hard footsteps to follow when you'd dressed me up as a little girl, sprayed my butt with mud so it looked like I'd had an 'accident', and taped over my mouth so I couldn't call mom and dad....

I think the worst thing about growing up as the youngest kid in the family was The Fear. I'm sure other Youngest Children will agree. We were never far from The Fear. Obviously the cause varied, but The Fear was always there….

The Fear that my world's biggest Lego tower, carefully and painstakingly built over several weeks, could be destroyed in seconds by an 'accidently' thrown cushion….

The Fear that at any time one of my brothers could hold me down whilst the other brother squatted down and er… 'let one rip' as close to my nose as possible, then tickle me until I gasped for breath....

The Fear that would steal my sleep at night, because my siblings had spent hours convincing me that I wasn't really part of the family, but a stray Goblin that mom and dad (who were really a witch and wizard) had taken in to fatten up for Christmas…

The Fear that the conversation with the first girl I had the courage to actually speak to would be interrupted at any second by my brother telling her about my fictitious Barbie doll collection. ….

The Fear.

Us 'Youngest Kids' never knew what was going to happen. The Fear was ever-present.

And do you know what? Even when we're grown up there's The Fear. The Fear of a conspiracy against us… I read the results of a survey recently (obviously a survey done by a middle / older child), which stated that 90% of the Youngest Kids of this world will grow up to be rebels without any self worth.

Self worth? Your kidding, right? Of course we won't have self-worth. Our parents had to go through a list of seventeen names (including all three dogs, the royal family and Aunt Sally's tortoise) before they could remember ours.

And how can a person who has no photographic evidence of a childhood have any self worth? We aren't idiots. We know full well that the novelty of taking pictures always wears off after the first couple of children have walked their first steps, ridden their first bikes, dressed up for their first day at school etc etc. By the time the last child is doing anything memorable, it's just too much of a pain to get the camera out.

“Look mom, look dad, I've mastered a triple somersault with inward pike and double negative, wide-armed spin and I'm poised to do it off the garage roof into the paddling pool, blindfolded!”
“Sorry son, your older brother has just sewn on his first button and we're trying to get 17 close up photographs of his smug expression…”

I kid you not. Ask any Youngest Child.

I remember when the future Mrs Ed and I were first dating and I had invited her to a family get-together. I unfortunately hadn’t realised that the dog had dug up the box of family slides where I'd buried them under the garden shed and Mom thought watching them would be a good way to spend the evening (oh the joys!). After about three hours I heard a whisper in the darkness.
“So… were you adopted?.... Like… when you were fifteen?”
“No!” I answered from my seat on the floor, “Why would you say that?”

“Well,” the new love of my life quietly observed, “there has been 1475 pictures of your sister, 302 of your elder brother, 93 of your middle brother and well… none of you… unless you count that bit of someone's shoulder in one of the 79 pictures of your sister's Brownie graduation.”

My mother must have overheard, because she proudly exclaimed as the projector clicked and the image of the next slide appeared on the wall.
“Aaah, HERE's one of you Nic, no Jem, no Mark, no Charles, no Diane, no Rover, no Mountbatten, er.. no Poppet, YES! POPPET! There you are in the paddling pool!”

I beamed proudly, but my joy was cut short on hearing my future wife's next observation.
“Actually it isn't him,” she said “That's a little girl. If you look closely there's pink ribbons in her hair…”
Close scrutiny proved her correct. What's more, the tiny child in the slide was a skinny wisp of a thing, and I vaguely remembered being a somewhat pudgy and round little boy, though I had no way to prove it.
“Mom!,” I whined, exceptionally disappointed, “She's wearing my green bubbly costume! How could you?”

My mother sighed.
“Oh I remember now. The neighbour had brought her child Beatrice over for a swim, and I suddenly remembered the overseas family had asked us to send a picture of you and… well… somehow we didn't have any. So we thought…. as Beatrice was such a good looking child…. and your dad had the camera out anyway…