I am... The One and Only!
In 1979 (around August) my parents (one a Danish immigrant, the other a wholesome British farm girl) were rutting like a pair of angry hamsters. One can only imagine the sweaty nastiness of it all as my father mounted her and, in a moment of alcohol-induced romance, muttered “oh, shit. I think the condom’s split.”

9 months later, then, and I spout forth in to the world. 3.10am on an April morning in the year of nineteen hundred and eighty. Something about me, or the experience, must have been so geut-wrenchingly terrifying, so awe-inducingly feral, so nauseatingly disgusting, that the first thing my father did was to march right down to the GP (pausing to register my birth and my ridiculous name along the way) and have his tubes tied, thereby negating any opportunity for the pair of them to procreate once more.

So, unlike many of you here, I am an only child. An only child’s lot is not a happy one. Sure, you may say that we don’t have to share things, and that we don’t have to suffer the ignominy of wearing hand-me-downs, and that Christmas time is always a bumper bonanza. But none of this, none of it, makes up for the fact that when something goes wrong during a poorly planned scientific experiment in to the binding qualities between Mummy’s foundation and the corduroy sofa there is no-one else to blame it on. (note for scientists – it is very hard to get liquid foundation out of a corduroy sofa, even if you try to wipe it off with Mummy’s best table cloth.)

Even worse is when you haven’t done something wrong, for example eating the last packet of cheese and onion crisps, and still copping the blame for it because you’re the youngest person in the house, even though your Dad is sitting smugly in the corner chair, with crumbs around his mouth smelling vaguely cheesy and oniony. And no matter how much you protest your innocence and present evidence (such as “but Mummy, look at Daddy’s face!”), you are still branded a glutton and a liar, and sent to your room without being allowed to take He-Man and Battlecat with you.

What I’m getting at is this. Celebrate your siblings. Cradle them in your arms, and rapture in their very existence. Because you will, until the day you die, have someone else to blame it on. :)
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Tue 6 Jan 2009, 10:41, 1 reply)

Beautifully written as always...
Bonus for "rutting like angry hamsters".
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Wed 7 Jan 2009, 11:11, closed)