Being eight is hard.
Between the play dates and the softball games and the gymnastics and the sleepovers and the swimming, it’s a little overwhelming. Add in a birthday party every other week and overnights at Granny’s and it’s simply exhausting.
It’s even harder being eight with a fifteen year old sister.
That’s really hard.
Your sister gets to sit in the front seat with your mom while you’re relegated to the back seat where no one hears you call out “What did you say? I can’t hear you. What are you talking about? ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME?”
Your sister gets to wear cool makeup like purple eyeshadow and green eyeliner and blue mascara and you’re only allowed to dab on a little of that sparkly invisible lip gloss that came with the Bratz doll you got three years ago, the one your mom gave away because she didn’t want you playing with anything resembling a Hootchie Mama.
Your sister gets to wear fancy bras with underwire in them and then worry about setting off the metal detector alarm in airport security. Your undershirts don’t set off anything.
Your sister gets a cell phone because she goes all sorts places alone and the only two places you’re allowed to go alone is the bathroom and never.
Your sister gets to shave her legs and you can’t even grow decent hair on yours, no matter how much you water them.
You have to go to bed by 9:00 on school nights because your mom says you need a lot of sleep so you won’t be grumpy but your sister gets to go to bed whenever she wants since she can’t help being grumpy because she was born that way.
Your sister gets to watch PG-13 movies with her friends and you’re not allowed to watch anything worse than a PG because a PG-13 probably has bad words in it, which doesn’t even make sense since you know all the words by heart anyway because Mom’s an adult and has earned the right to use whatever words she wants, whenever she wants.
Your sister gets to turn Mom all sorts of colors and make her twitch and slap herself and practically throw up by yelling I GET MY LICENSE IN 365 DAYS and the only thing she does when you yell I GET MY LICENSE IN 8 YEARS is tell you that you obviously have plenty of time to clean your room so get a move on.
Your sister gets to monopolize the computer all the time because she has homework and mom thinks that’s way more important than buying a color coordinating toilet for your Webkinz bathroom.
Your sister gets to have a real, live boyfriend but you’re not allowed to like any boys until you’re in high school because that’s when Mom says boys stop being smelly and chock full of gross.
Your sister gets to wear contacts and pretty sunglasses. You have to wear regular glasses and the only sunglasses you can wear are the big, plastic, floppy ones you got from the eye doctor a couple of months ago and you can’t even wear those because your toy box ate them.
Your sister gets to have her very own piece of punctuation and whenever you ask Daddy when you can get a period too, he always tells you to ask Mom and then when you ask Mom, she always tells you that you don’t want one, which is crazy because if you didn’t want one, you wouldn’t ask for one.
Your sister gets to have two birthday parties while you’re stuck with only one because your mom still loves your dad and stays married to him even though she says he cheats on her with his crackberry.
Being eight is hard.
Let’s hope nine is a whole lot easier.
.
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18 thoughts on “It’s not easy being eight”
Poor baby! I remember being the younger kid and how much it sucked. Tell her when her sister is old and wrinkly and senile she will still have a few more years of looking good!
Reading this (hilarious) makes me very glad that my two boys are closer in age.
Awww, happy birthday Helena!!
This is perfection, as always, Andy! Makes me glad I was the oldest. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Though, being the oldest had its downside too – like how my very first car was a 10 year old Oldsmobile Delta 88 tank that I was privileged enough to *buy* from my parents for $1900 (and that they then sold two weeks after I left for college because it was “not being used” – ahem, I wasn’t allowed to bring it to school – and it was “taking up space in the driveway” – and mind you I never saw a penny of the money from the sale, either, that supposedly went to “help pay for college” though Mom did have a few new pairs of shoes when I came home for October break to discover this whole, major injustice) and I had to pay for my own insurance and gas because *that* was part of the *responsibility* that came with having a car, and then flash forward six and a half years to when my youngest sister got her license and Mom and Dad bought her a brand-spankin’-new, cherry red Jeep Grand Cherokee with a CD player and sunroof and leather interior, then paid for her insurance *and* gave her a gas card that THEY paid for…………..
No, of course I’m not still bitter. I’m pushing 40, why would I still be bitter about something that happened when I was 17 (because, btw, we couldn’t get our driver’s license until SEVENTEEN in NJ when I was a kid. Yeah, not bitter about *that* either, I swear.)?
Andy, I’m telling you, it is also a major injustice that you do not have a book deal yet, or at least a paid column in some excellent magazine. Seriously.
Rofl …my oldest it so totally that way too! The big 8th bday is in the next two months. Little sister thinks is totally uncool that she can’t turn 8 and stay up until 9 too.
Thank’s for the laugh..I have a poll on my blog need your vote andy.
Aw that sucks! But it’s not all gravy being the oldest. Parents make rules & things & then see it didn’t work out so well on you or perhaps they just got sick of the effort of enforcing them and your younger sibling gets away with everything! They end up doing all sorts of things earlier than you were allowed to do them.
I agree with Stacy…also about the oldest…(I’m saying this from my parenting perspective, because I was both an only and a youngest…don’t ask)….I find with my eldest I was just experimenting on him to see what would work. That poor dude has been the butt of many of my parenting mistakes….
Your blog is absolute perfection…I would really appreciate if you’d write about how hard it is to be 15 now. It would make a great foil to this post. I see teenagers at the movies nowadays and I’m SO glad I’m not a teenager now!
LOL!! yup it’s hard being 8. Hannah can’t wait till her b-day in July cause she thinks that by turning 9 things will magically go her way! It’s super hard being 8 when you’re stuck between 2 brothers! Not only is Hannah a middle child but she has to put up with the teasing and grossness of 2 boys! One good thing is she KNOWS she doesn’t want her “punctuation” and after seeing something on TV and asking me if it hurts to have a baby she’s declared she NEVER wants to get married and have kids 😀 If only I could keep her that way…sigh
Your writing is fantastic! I love the laundry story posted below, so totally my house, too!! Thanks for the clever stories, definitely made me laugh 😉
Oh, man. I laughed out loud at this! GREAT post. Hilarious!
I am the oldest, so I was always on the better end of this deal… But I can only imagine that’s how my brother felt! Lol!
Aw, life stinks sometimes :o(
That is so very true! But it is boys in my house!
Holy Toledo that is our life in a nutshell right now, with an 8 yr old, an 11 yr old and a 16 yr old! lol
Oh! This is so funny! I am so going to have to show this one to my children.
I know how fond you are of the T-Mobile ads set in London and you bemoan the fact that nothing like this happens in America – well, I give you ‘Free Beats Friday’
awwww…poor baby. one day she’ll catch up. sorta.
SOOOO glad I’m not eight. It sounds terribly hard… ; )
And I thought being 33 was hard!