Birth Order and Houdini

When I was growing up, being the eldest, I was given responsibility. Being the first born, I looked at it this way - I was the one put in charge. I had responsibilites. I'm sure that the way my parents looked at it was, that I was the oldest so I could DO more than the younger sibs. However, I looked at it as more like I was in charge of seeing that the younger ones did the work. I supervised. If you have ever read anything on birth order it can be real illuminating. Birth order and some personality traits correlate very well. Vickie and I are BOTH first borns. Nathan and Betsy are BOTH first borns, Bryan, Sariah, Jeremy and Robin are all middle children. Then there's Kristi and Matt. (I'm just wondering here, if you ask me or Vickie, we think that you guys are doing great jobs with your kids and are really proud of you all) But what's it like to be raised by the middle children, or by the babies of the families? I can't fathom it. It's got to have an affect.

Houdini

Being the eldest, I was sometimes left in charge....... the free babysitter. In retrospect, I terrorized those poor kids. Now, one of my goals was to get them out of the way, so I could do what I wanted, which generally didn't involve them...... So we would play Houdini. I would volunteer to go first. I would let them tie me up, it was easy to wiggle out of their knots, especially if you held your wrists the right way. Then when it was their turn, I would tie them up real good and go off and leave them. My memory doesn't tell me how LONG I left them for, but I know it was longer than THEY wanted.