Susan Alexander - The Rant

Susan’s Rant – January 2006

Breeders

“It’s a boy!” The subject line in my brother and sister-in-laws email said.

The email also included sonograms. This means I have pictures of an unborn baby saved on my desktop and a reminder that my brother beat me to breeding first. I will accept this defeat gracefully since my mother will lay off me not breeding for at least nine months.

My new role as Auntie Susan is something I think I might enjoy. My plan is when I baby sit my future nephew and he can eat solid foods, I will load him up with sugar and drop him off back at my brother’s place. Looking forward to getting back at my brother for being my Mother’s favorite when we were younger.

When I was baby and my brother was about six years old, my family lived in Korea where my father was stationed in the Army. We lived outside the Army base since we were a family but all the housing costs were provided for by the military. That is when my mother decided she could afford extra help to raise two kids and hired a local Korean nanny/housekeeper, Kimchi. Great, I had two Korean women raising me.

A few years ago, my cousins who were living near us in Korea informed me that Kimchi paid the most attention to my brother and very little towards me. But I was told I was a low maintenance baby since I would eat and sleep all the time. That’s not low maintenance that’s what babies do! I do not blame Kimchi for favoring my brother, but I blame my cousins for telling me since ignorance is bliss.

All of a sudden I became this over-the-hill Nancy Drew searching for family photos to see if my brother was the favored one. As I suspected, I found tons pictures of my brother and two baby pictures of me. Thank God for mandatory school photos or I would not have any photos of me when I was young.

The majority of pictures I found were of my brother on his sixth birthday when we were living in Korea. He was dressed like a Korean prince with hundreds of gifts surrounding him in every picture. He basically had a Korean bar mitzvah. I guess my parents spent all their money on my brother’s birthdays since there were no pictures of me having a birthday party when I was growing up.

Yes, there have been times I have been jealous of my brother. Now that I am grown-up and more mature, I am delighted that my brother is starting a family. The fact that my nephew’s delivery time is the same month my father passed away is pretty cool. Anyways, since Dad’s dead and Mom loves me more now.

HAVE A HAPPY 2006!

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