God, I must have suffered. I think of myself as having been a sort of Oliver Twist meets The Jungle type kid who was forced to hock my wears shoeless on the streets for only a bit of gruel. Then I died of consumption.
Two other things:
1. Yes, it's totally about fairness and not greed. I can prove this. Sometimes I inadvertantly cut one piece of cake bigger than the other. Then I feel totally guilty because I know one piece is better, even if it's hard to see. When I bring the pieces to Erik I hold them both out and ask him to choose his piece. See, if it was about greed, I'd just take the bigger one. Of course, if it wasn't, maybe I'd take the smaller one...
2. I think we can still blame it on birth order. You were out to protect your food from grubbing hands like mine. I had to fight for every scrap so that those who were bigger didn't leave me hungry. (Yeah right, as if I ever went hungry.)
Sounds very logical, ladies, and I'm casting another vote for the birth-order explanation. I am essentially an only child--although I have three half-siblings, the youngest is 15 years older than me--and I attribute my weird food tendencies to my only-childhood. Case in point: I am NOT good at sharing. For a long time, if you asked me for a taste of the food on my plate, I'd look at you as though you had three heads. When my then-boyfriend and I lived together, I spent ridiculous amounts of energy worrying that I'd go to look for some specific food item in the fridge or cabinet and find that he'd eaten it already. The mere thought of this made me crazy...even though the dear boy understood this and NEVER would have dreamed of doing such a thing. Poor guy. I was terrible. BUT! Note the use of the past tense! With conscious effort, I'm getting SO much better about sharing. In fact, I've almost convinced myself that I like it.
Of course, we'll never really know until
Waaah! HaloScan cut me off! What I was saying was this:
"Of course, we'll never really know until I have a live-in boyfriend again, will we?"
Taaa daaa.
So by our own logic: oldest, youngest, and onlies are all gluttonous, selfish pigs. The hope lies in the middle children, I guess.
My girlfriend, as a latch-key-kid-extraordinaire, is alleged to have regularly frisked the couch for loose change, run to the corner store and buy the cheapest pint of ice cream possible, then lock herself in her bedroom and devour the entire thing. All to avoid the hungry gaze of her older brother...
Gluttony knows no bounds. Especially in the youngest sibling.
love,
An Older Brother.
Commenting by HaloScan
