Birth Order and You

When I got to my writing critique group this week, J and R were talking about birth order. I butted in (the only way youngest children get heard) and told them how I have always been fascinated with the subject, and how when I was engaged I read a book that said that my husband (also a youngest) and I would have a good marriage but that neither of us would discipline our kids. (Turns out we’re okay at discipline.)
An aside, the book suggested youngest children marry oldest children since they’re already used to being bossed around. Middle children are okay with any marriage partner, and I don’t remember about only children. Maybe they should marry each other since they’ll understand each other’s need for time alone.

Anyway, we moved on to talking about whether to change our meeting place. S (not present) likes The Bagel Shop, a new place we’ve tried, and R prefers our usual, The Coffee Shop. We’re also talking about trying another new place, The Bakery. I said I didn’t care much where we met, and we laughed at my typical youngest kid response. Not that I never got to make any decisions about my own life growing up, but I did get told how to do things properly all the time, and you just resign yourself to getting told what to do. Even as an adult, if I try to help in the kitchen at holidays, I wash the strawberries too early or start the meat cooking too late, according to my sisters. And in other group situations, I find my suggestions usually aren’t the ones the group ends up going with, so I might as well not suggest anything. Anyway, J laughed and said, “Okay, youngest child, why don’t you decide what we should do next week.”
“Well,” I said, “since R is going to be out of town, why don’t we do The Bagel Shop, since S likes it, and then the following week, when everyone will be there, we can try The Bakery.”

We left it at that and critiqued each other’s writing, R sweet as always and J hilarious as always (Oh this is the beginning of a novel? Good, cause I thought it was a short story and the ending sucked!) and then, as we wrapped it up, J summarized our discussion about meeting places.
“Okay, so next week we’ll meet at The Bakery, and if we like it we’ll go again the week after, and R can see if she likes it.”
I just laughed to myself and thought, oh J, you are so going in my blog.