Scribblings

Why Can't You Be Like ...

Ampersand Project:

Topic: why can't you be more like your sister/brother? (This can be interpreted any way you like.)

It’s so unfair to make this comparison to brothers and sisters! Both get hurt in different ways. In my case, my parents would say to my brother, “Why can’t you be like your sister?” There is no way Pete could live up to that because there’s no way he can be like me. It’s not just a matter of being girl/boy either.

We have totally different temperaments. I’ve always been more withdrawn, especially when I was growing up. My brother, on the other hand, was always out with his buddies. So who would be more likely to get into mischief? There’s not a lot of bad stuff you can do from your bedroom, I know that for sure!

It’s not like I didn’t get into mischief myself. I just never got caught. I remember my parents freaking out because Pete was caught cutting school. Not only did he do that, he and his friends also boosted a keg of beer from a neighbor’s house. My parents were sure my brother was a juvenile delinquent.

Why couldn’t he be a “good” kid like me?

I was cutting classes several times a week and even when I got caught, I was slick enough to talk my way out of it without my parents getting involved. It was easy, which is why I got into it so often. I would deliberately miss homeroom by hanging out in a bathroom. As soon as the bell rang, I’d go to the office and get a late pass. After that, I’d simply skip the classes I didn’t want to go to. The teachers would see my name show up on the absentee list; there wasn’t a list of the kids with late passes.

Granted, when I did cut class I did nerdy stuff. I would take the bus to downtown Baltimore and go into the very large Enoch Pratt Free Library. I could spend hours and hours there and did. The worst thing I did there was to develop “sticky fingers” and leave the building with a book or two.

Another thing I’d do – especially if a friend cut with me – was sightsee in the city. We’d walk all over, enjoying the sights and buying stuff to eat and drink. I never got into drinking or drugging like other kids might. BOR-ing!

How did I get caught? Well, the other thing I’d do was go visit another class. I loved the drama class I was taking and learned a lot from the teacher. Drama was only a half-year course, though and so I ended up with something else during the spring semester. I found out that drama was offered at the end of the day. That was the time I’d normally be in this totally dull history class. I’d feel my head nodding off there. So, yes, I would cut history and go to drama instead. And one day my history teacher was walking down the hall. As she passed the classroom, she looked in … and right into my eyes. Busted!

Okay, so this stuff wasn’t as serious as the stuff my brother was getting into. Still, I wasn’t perfect and I felt awful when my parents would compare my brother to me.

He has a lot of trouble writing and I wonder now if he didn’t have some form of dysgraphia. Maybe he had other learning disabilities, too, and they just weren’t detected. He had to repeat fifth grade. I’m not sure what happened to him exactly but I do remember my parents had a fit. After all, I’d never been left behind. If anything, people wanted to ‘accelerate’ me.

I was the kid my parents could depend on. They are deaf and needed to have a lot of stuff interpreted or explained to them. Of course, they never bothered to ask my brother for assistance if I was around. He never learned any signs except for the very basic ones. No wonder he felt like no one cared very much about him!

I don’t remember any overt signs of sibling rivalry. I might have tried to lord my “goodness” over him at some point but I can’t say when or what. Most of the time, I tried to stay invisible when my parents started that crap.

So what happened? My brother dropped out of school when he was 16. For almost a year, he didn’t do much of anything except drink with his friends and fight with his gang against other gangs. Sometimes he’d work as an ay-rab (that’s in Baltimore and it’s what everyone called the horse pulled vegetable/fruit vendors) but there was nothing steady about it. My parents got sick of that and tossed him out when he was 17.

He joined the Navy. It didn’t last long. He made it through boot camp and then was going to be assigned navigational training in Italy. He didn’t want to be so far from his girlfriend and so he deserted. When the Navy caught up with him, everyone agreed he was just a confused kid and he was discharged because his knees were shot. The Navy said they hadn’t realized his knees were in such bad shape when he first enlisted.

I wonder.

He ended up marrying his young girlfriend. No one was especially happy about that. Both families were against the wedding because he and Mary were so young, 19 and 18. He still didn’t have a steady job and was still into fighting and drinking but he did manage to pass his GED.

Now? My brother is two-times divorced. He is 46 years old and has been the produce manager of a grocery store for the last, I don’t know … 20 odd years? He’s always had to struggle for money to pay doctor bills and what have you. The jobs he worked at didn’t afford any health insurance. He has a daughter, my niece Tricia, who is going to be 17 in April--the same age Pete was when my parents tossed him out. That won't happen to her.

I talked to my brother on New Year’s Eve. He’s made a lot of changes in the last 10 years and he’s like a totally different person. He felt a lot of anger toward my parents, particularly my father. He thought they didn’t care about him … not until I left the area and they began to depend on him instead. He compared his relationship to them like Harry Chapin’s song called “Cats in the Cradle”. Recently, though, he’s begun to let go of his anger.

We both realize that my parents are who they are and will never be any different.

As for me, the “good” one: I graduated in the 4/5 of my high school class. I was a real underachiever. I didn’t go to college after high school. I’m not sure why. I told myself it was because my parents convinced me that they had no money to help me. I started working clerical jobs. Maybe I was afraid of becoming too “successful”.

I didn’t have a healthy relationship with a guy until I was almost 30 years old. Until then, I was going out with guys who were possessive or drank too much or were very self-centered. All the years I was growing up, I put off what I wanted and deferred to my parents’ wishes because that’s what a “good” girl does. It took that long for me to realize that I was important and I had needs too.

Now I am happier than I ever thought I could be. I love a man who treats me like a queen and I know that he loves me back because he tells or shows me in so many ways. I feel really good about myself at last and feel like I’m a competent parent. And I’ve gotten so much encouragement for my writing!

And my brother seems happy -- as happy as can be expected I suppose.

“Why can’t you be like your sister?”

Parents don’t realize what they are doing when they say that stuff. How much different would things have been for my brother and me if they’d never said it? It might be interesting to wonder but not dwell on it. There’s no changing it now so why worry about it!

Unconscious Mutterings: