"This is Our Daughter, Dottie...And This is Our Other Daughter, Dottie's Sister..."

It isn't easy growing up surrounded by siblings so close to your own age. Granted, you always have someone to play with, but you also have very many to fight with as well...

And sharing? It takes on a whole new meaning when there's a tribe...

Having always felt inferior to my older brother, Tom (only one year and two weeks older than myself...), he was always the first to do this, better at that, quicker at this, allowed to do that... Even worse was the fact that, while only a year and two weeks younger, by the time I was three, I was much taller than he. Hence, everyone thought I was older... And expected me to act like it!

So I did. Much to the chagrin of our next brother, Mike, who was two years and six months younger than myself, as well as our two youngest sisters, the first of which (Sylvia) who followed two weeks less than a year after Mike, with Cynthia bringing up the rear only a year and three months after Sylvia (Yes, my mother had five kids within six years... With NO twins... I do believe for a few years there she was certifiably insane!). Not only was I constantly riding Mike to act this way, not do that (resulting in much hand-to-hand-to-rock-to-baseball bat-to-phone-to-fists-to-whatever-else-happened-to-be-lying-around combat...), but there was the added insult of "Why can't you be more like your brother?"

I think we both cringed whenever that phrase was spoken, whether by parent, teacher, AWANA leader, or whatever other authority figure happened to be watching the five of us all at once... While I knew all too well my own personal failings as a human being (beaten into our five little skulls by the wonderful Christians at Chapel Christian Academy during our youth...), but Mike's personal failings were now magnified by my seemingly non-existent ones for all the world to judge...

To this day, I try very hard never to tell any of my nieces and nephews to be "more like" this person, or "less like" that person...

Unfortunately, however, life is always reduced back to a popularity contest, no matter how hard we try to extricate ourselves from such notions. Once again, I have been placed in someone else's office and told to "make them more like me." Not only that, but they've been told to "be more like Jason." Never mind that this person is damn good at their job, albeit a bit slower at completing their projects... But suddenly, not only am I being praised for being good at my work making little green things under ridiculous time constraints, I've been made that golden idol which I not only don't deserve, I never asked for, and never tried to be...

We were always taught to just "do our best." This is one of the driving forces behind all of our work ethics. I know each and every one of my siblings also strive to to their very best when given a task to perform, even when we don't want to do it! We give it our all, and while we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, we've learned to embrace that which we can do while continuing to work on that which we don't do so well at--and always be there for one another without the competition, but with all the good-natured ribbing still intact...

It's odd, however, to be placed once again in the role of "golden boy." Much as I take a certain pride in my work, knowing I've done a good job, when it's been turned into a weapon with which to make others feel inferior, even "bad" or "expendable," I just want to run away and shun the responsibility. I want to be "Dottie's Sister," not Dottie... (If you've ever seen A League of Their Own, you'll know what I'm talking about...) Most times I do feel like Dottie. I have most of the things I want in life, I'm happy and content just doing what I need to do to be able to go home and relax, or garden, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I don't need, and don't want to be the star. I don't want to be so good that others are shamed into thinking they're no good!

But then I'd stop being me at the expense of others, something else I promised myself I'd never do again either...

Life is full of these quandaries, isn't it? "Damned if you do, damned if you don't"-type scenarios...

It's taken me a lot of years to learn not to be jealous of Tom and his accomplishments, almost as many years as its taken for me to stop being as hard on Mike as I am on myself! While I know these types of things will come and go no matter where I happen to end up working (after all, it always seems to!), I'm still left just as bewildered as before on how to best navigate these waters that feel like the minefields my brothers and I created between ourselves...

How do I keep this co-worker from resenting me? How do I keep from resenting my boss over this? How do I help them be the Dottie that they are, so that I can once again just be one of the many sisters?

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Ernie Capadino: [to a salesman] You know, if I had your job, I'd kill myself! Wait here, I'll see if I can dig up a pistol.

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