Innumerable articles have detailed the effect of birth order on persons’ trajectories and personalities, and in most, firstborns and middles seem to get the most attention.
As a firstborn, and as a “Jr.,” I have some skin in the game.
Often, firstborns are their parents’ experiment, the product of this chapter of Benjamin Spock or that episode of Fred Rogers. Either many mistakes are made or none, and if more children come along, the parents adapt, tighten up, loosen up.
Sons and daughters designated Junior or II or Chip or Deuce can be expected to follow in parental footsteps, especially if a parent is notable and/or if the child shows many of the same innate talents and skills as the parent. A double- or triple-whammy.
But what if the firstborn gets an older brother?
When asked about our family, Dad always answered, “I have six sons but seven boys” (later, eight, then nine, as other young men came under his tutelage).
His brother, Richard, 14 years younger than Dad to the day, came to live with us in 1960, to finish high school, college, grad school … and to drive my brothers and me to the Asbury Park boardwalk and Palace Amusements in a VW Beetle.
He’s the only person I’ve ever seen successfully grab the brass ring — often — on a carousel. Metaphor? Prognostication? Perhaps.
Creative, loving and hard-working, our brother-uncle changed the birth-order dynamic slightly yet dramatically.
… to be continued
