Maybe only amusing to me

The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree…

This one might only be appreciated by someone else who had the misfortune of being the “scapegoat” in a family controlled by a narcissistic parent. This is about my sibling who was the “golden child”.

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of Facebook since it strikes me as a narcissists dream come true. About the only reason I’m even on it is so I can see pictures of my brother’s grandkids that his daughter and daughter-in-law post and read about what’s going on in their lives. My brother and I don’t speak and I don’t want to put his kids in the middle so I don’t see them either. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in them though.

As I read through recent posts on my home page I saw his daughter had just added my brother as a “friend” so out of curiosity I clicked through to his page. It had only 4 pieces of information: his birth date, his employment status as retired, the date he graduated from his high school and the date he graduated from his college. I burst out laughing.

A little background to explain why. My brother was the golden child in our family and I was the scapegoat.  He was perfect and wonderful at everything and was regarded as brilliant. I was viewed as a loser at everything and extremely “mediocre” despite the fact I was an all A student. Go figure.

It took my brother 18 years to graduate from high school and another 18 years to graduate from college, not earning his degree until he was 36 years old. Meanwhile the mediocre  student (me) blasted through 4 years of college straight out of high school and graduated with a dual major after taking 24-26 hours a quarter.

Do you think the family ever gave me any credit for doing that? Of course not. Do you think the family ever discussed how many semesters the golden child paid for and then dropped his courses because he wasn’t making it to class or the fact my mother was fronting him money for this adventure for years. Again, of course not.

So what made me laugh? His date of birth was correct. I assume the “retired” employment status was correct. He fat fingered his high school graduation date and put 1996 instead of the actual 1966. And he conveniently added 4 years to his high school graduation date and put 1970 as his college graduation date.

He only lied by 14 years.

We both had a choice of who we would be like; our down to earth, what you see is what you get dad or our mother who was all pretense and image of perfection. It’s pretty clear to me what tree my brother decided to fall close to and I’m so glad I didn’t make that same choice.

Four easy pieces of information and he could only get half of them right. Hey, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the truth or not — all that matters is how it looks. Right??