Onliest child

[muckefuck]

I don't know if all grade schools do this, but instead of making each child responsible for themselves, the parochial schools we attended had a way of designating one child from each family to be the responsible party for such routine business as bringing news home, purchasing lunch tickets, and so forth. The term used was "oldest and only": If you were an only child, or if you were the oldest of several in the same school, you were on the hook to see that these jobs got done.

I wasn't the oldest; I was the second-oldest, and only a year younger than my older brother. So for seven years, any time "oldest and only" came up, I tuned out. Not entirely, I don't think; there must have been days where it was something interesting enough for me to bring up at home if my brother forgot to. But for the most part, I was like "Oh, he'll take care of that."

Of course, after eighth grade, he moved on to high school and suddenly I had to pay attention. I hadn't really considered what had been asked of him until his responsibilities became mine and I realised I was terrible at them. More than once, I was pulled out of class because my younger brother was standing there beside the lunch line unable to eat because I'd forgotten to purchase lunch tickets for the three of us as I was supposed to. (The youngest children always went to the cafeteria first.) I'm sure there were bigger messes I made that I've forgotten all about now.

That's what the last 19 weeks feel like to me: a flashback to that eighth-grade year. There were good reasons for assigning monshu the responsibilities he had, and though I had some idea what was involved, I didn't appreciate enough what it would mean for me to have to take them all on. And belatedly I recognise that I might never be able to give them up again.

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't remember that at all. I imagine it was a big deal for me at the time, but, clearly, it didn't leave much of an impression.

It doesn't help that you have all of those responsibilities, as well as all of the responsibilities of his hospitalization tacked on. That's a Hell of a lot for one person.