As the youngest child in my family, I can attest to the fact that there are a lot of problems with growing up the youngest. The best lies have all been taken. Your parents already know what day the report cards come in the mail. The only extracurricular activities open to you are the ones your older siblings have already outgrown the equipment for, unless they didn’t do it long enough to actually get the equipment, and then in that case the answer is a flat out “no.” Why? “Because your (sister/brother) tried that once and quit, and no way am I wasting all that money again.”
Of course, there are also a lot of benefits to growing up the youngest. All of the good lies may have been taken, but you don’t really need the good lies, because, depending on the number of siblings ahead of you, your parents have probably relaxed/been worn out to the point where they are only asking for your excuse as a token gesture anyway. It’s a ritual, the same way a lodge member in a town of 200 will still ask his fellow lodge member to participate in call and response—although instead of replying to “The sun always rises in the East,” with “But the shadows stretch to the West;” with parents and children it’s more likely to be “Where were you all night?” and “The Abstinence Club meeting ran late.”
I’d like to think that this is a two-way street: just as parents seem to hold older children accountable to a higher standard, so too do those same children hold their parents accountable, with the reverse being true for the younger set. Yes, parents expect the older siblings to be home by curfew, but older siblings also expect parents to be home before the crack of dawn as well. It goes both ways.
This became abundantly apparent to me the other night, when my son Clyde (the youngest) got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. I happened to be sitting on the couch, writing. On the couch with me was a blanket that circumstances led me to believe had been taken outside earlier by my daughter, Clementine. Those circumstances were that it was now moderately crawling with caterpillars.
I say “moderately” because in the course of the previous twenty minutes no less than three caterpillars had crawled across my laptop screen. Three isn’t really a lot, especially for caterpillars (three black widow spiders would have been another story), but it was more than the maximum number of caterpillars I like to keep on my body at all times. About three more, to be precise. I was trying to decide whether or not that was enough caterpillars to make it was worth my time to get up, take the blanket outside, and shake it off when Clyde found me. Always of the opinion that it is better to have more input (even if I ultimately choose to ignore all of it), I decided to tell Clyde about my current caterpillar problem, and see what he thought.
“Hey Clyde,” I said, “there’s caterpillars crawling all over me.”
He didn’t bat an eye. “Mmm hmm,” he said. And then added, almost as an afterthought, “Are you high?”
“No,” I spluttered. “Of course not.”
He nodded his head. “Then you should probably get them off of you.”
That was it. No judgement, no offers to conduct an intervention, just a simple request for the facts. And when I denied being in an altered state, there was no disbelief, either. Just some sage advice.
Yeah, when it comes to being the youngest, maybe the best lies have all been taken because you don’t really need them anymore anyway.