Erin The Great

I was reading a fellow blogger today. She had posted something about making herself cute when she was a little girl so that someone would see her and adopt her from her large family. I thought this was hysterical, not only because I had felt like that when I was younger, but also because I’m the oldest so there was no way I was going to give up my territory for some little runt that happened to come after me. I was the golden child and I wanted it to stay that way!

I tried for months and months when ‘the boy’ was born to have my mom take him back. ‘No! Take him back’ I would scream. This would usually happen after ‘the boy’ would come and knock over my blocks. Such an event would send my 2-year-old self into an all-star hissy fit. After it was abundantly clear that this constant pain in my butt wasn’t going anywhere, I began to devise other plans. Plans that happened with the mind set of ‘well if it’s here, it might as well be useful’. My brother turned very quickly into a doll I could dress up and whose hair I could put clips in. Yes, he was the perfect doll until he decided that he wasn’t having it anymore. I had to devise a new plan. I’ll sell him! Yes, that should do the trick! I tried to pawn him off on the neighbors and other family members, but that didn’t work either. He was there to stay no matter how I felt about the matter.

It’s funny. I’ll be talking to friends and they’ll be talking about how they grew up best friends with their siblings… this was not the case in the Jarvis house. We’re friends NOW, but growing up was very interesting. There was some serious sibling rivalry going on there. He was the baby so basically he got spoiled, and a lot of the attention. He was smarter and funnier…at least I had sarcasm. Being the experiment child (as older children usually are) I didn’t understand why there was a crack down on the shenanigans coming from me. I guess flooding the school bathroom in the third grade didn’t exactly help my case, but still! After I started getting in trouble for playing poker and winning lunch money (Thank you dad and Mr. Grassman for teaching us young and impressionable children how to play poker on our 3rd grade field trip to the zoo…) as well as various other acts of destruction, the boy decided to use this to his advantage by starting fights and then yelling something along the lines of ‘Erin stop’…. Guess who got in trouble?

Both of us were criminal masterminds, my brother being much more so (Friggin little genius). Luckily I was also quite the little Con Artist, so when we did get along, it was amazing what we could get done and the things we could accomplish. My poor mother… I think she deserves more then a mansion in heaven. For years our number was on the school’s speed dial as well as us being banned from houses for being ‘bad examples’ whatever! Your children were just as bad as we were! We were just better at not getting caught… tee hee hee.

All the sibling rivalry aside, I must admit that with my ever-growing jealousy of his ability to pull better pranks then me as well as being able to TP full blown mansions in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t until after I graduated High School when my jealousy turned into full-blown admiration. It was right after he climbed the roof of our school and painted the bell tower a brilliant plaid. That moment on, I realized that it was pointless. I’ve pulled some good pranks in my time and have done some seriously stupid stunts but it didn’t matter anymore. We both had way to many ‘black mail’ stories for our own good. I think the reason for that was we would always try to ‘one up’ the other and through that we’ve managed to accomplish some great things. So Jake, here’s to you buddy! Thank you for giving me endless fodder for my blog and novel as well as help developing my sarcasm and wit… There had to be something I was better at. Thank you mom for not sending him back when I pleaded with you… and for not getting mad when I told him that you found him under a rock and took pity.