Do you have any siblings?
Hi it’s me, Hilary, the youngest of four! I love to let people know that I am the baby of the family and therefore terribly unique and loved by all. I’m also a spoiled brat, according to my sister Emily. But if you ask Courtney’s diary I am making her feel like “she’s already a mom” at age 17 because she has to drive me literally everywhere. Of course if you ask Danny, he will yell and scream about how I never get off the couch and everyone always brings me snacks when I could totally get up and get them myself. But if you ask me, I’m adorable.
I love my siblings so much and am honestly low key *grateful* to have grown up in a rambunctious household. One of my favorite things to ask friends and strangers about is their birth order. It always reveals so much. Are you the eldest, carrying the weight of expectation? Or are you the middle child, trying desperately to get everyone’s attention while also keeping the peace? Or are you the baby like me, and everyone praised your existence? Are you one of three? Four? Or like my parents, eight? I don’t even know how birth order works when there’s eight children, who is in the middle?! What you basically never want to find out is that someone is an only child (I’m so sorry if you are, you can just stop reading this now and continue on with your day having no strange passive aggressive conversations with your sister). I weep for the only children of the world, it sounds like such a burden to be the only one laughing at your dad’s jokes.
My siblings have all began their procreation process so our family has extended to include four more boys and three more girls and I’m already seeing birth order come into play and let me tell you… it is fascinating. The friendship! The resentment! Already by age 3!
Here’s a cartoon of mine born out of my time at my dad’s family cabin in Northern Minnesota. If you end up in a canoe with a sister that doesn’t feel like paddling, your day is ruined. I know that when I have children I’ll be obsessing over whether or not they’re good at small talk.
This week I’ve asked my fellow Toonstackers to dish out their cartoon feelings on siblings, please enjoy and maybe send this newsletter to your brother?
I have an older sibling. I totally ruined her ‘only-child’ dream life after 4 years. The guilty bribes from parents to keep the eldest happy (until they realize the new kid is here for good) are a very specific brand of grandiose.
My brother is a poet, of all things. And his fiancé is a poet, and his friends are poets…so you can imagine how keen that whole set is to Notice The Beauty And Tragedy Of The World. For example, once my brother held a dinner party, and this lady Jacqueline started crying—real, down-the-face tears— because a book in the bookshelf was so blue. I hate this drawing, but I like this scavenging poet pack: hyenas for potent imagery.
I never had kids, and was always happy to just have a man and/or a dog in my life. But once I had a dog (and a man), and as I rather gleefully began to near the finish line of my ability to get pregnant and have children, I figured that if I did have a kid, I’d probably feel like my dog was its older brother.
This cartoon was published in The New Yorker as a caption contest, so now you know what my original caption was!
Siblings - our first, early brushes with gatekeepers. Incidentally, this is the “rough” of the cartoon. The final was for the Wall Street Journal so it had to be redone without the gray wash because the WSJ (as its friends call it) only print black and white. This version is better.
I’m the second of two kids. I haven’t read too much psychology, but I think that makes me the cool and funny one with no bad traits whatsoever? At least that’s how it worked out with me.
Dear Ethan,
Hiiiii I know you’re reading this. The above cartoon is for you because you, a grown man, have a deep inexplicable love for sheep and other barnyard animals. Barnyard animals are a big part of your humor repertoire now that I think about it. I know “wearable sheep” is a joke in our family, but I’m not sure I ever actually got it. Like, is the joke that some sweaters are so fuzzy that it’s like you’re wearing a sheep? Is that funny? Some jokes are just words you repeat with a certain intonation, references to past experiences when you were in a silly mood. That’s how sibling humor works I think: shared phonemes. Anyway, I took the liberty of making our joke funny for you, and now everyone who reads ToonStack knows you’re a weirdo muahahaha. Jk thanks for letting me steal/read your Farside collections as a kid.
Love,
Your little sister Amy
PS: Happy birthday tomorrow!
PPS: Baaaaa
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