i wonder what marks the significance in the childs eyes. when all things are judged by how it smells, how it looks and how it taste not by the judgement of reasoning. when every actions is impulse to the biological neurons and the nature of being. i wonder what event brought the child for their first use of reasons. their emancipation to senses and their birth to reasoning.
my social birthday, which is not another ER matter, is when i am taught to sleep on the right side of the bed. my brother on the left side of me with his voracious sleeping position and only the cold thick wall on my right. this is to keep me from falling flat into the floor but they never consider me squeezing into the wall.
that’s the order. i don’t know why. i can’t complain, i don’t even know what to complain in the first place. i read their physical actions, if things aren’t happening as how they want it, they create this facial muscle distortions and an annoying increase of tonal sharps. that’s how i learned, i read every facial wrinkles, i watched every increase of palmar activities, the increase and decrease of tonal sounds, the twinkles in their eyes and the lack of it, the smell of the surrounding.
move on to the times where reasoning is starting to take over. i am introduced to the world where there is supposed to be a mom and a dad, they that who never slept in our room with my grandma and her giant portrait of a long-haired man and with my brother and our bad-fractioned bed. i am introduced to this old young-man who always need to sleep with me and occupy the third of the bed leaving me the remaining part plus the thick cold wall. i am introduced to a grandma who always is watching in a box with moving pictures in the late-afternoons when we are in the room reprimanded to stay until they told us so.
years later. i started to reason out. the more i understand the logic of reasoning the more i need to think of more reasons. the more i discover things by reasoning the more they threw counter-reason. the badly-fractioned bed seemed to worsen, i am more squeezed to the cold thick wall. i am deafened by the snores in the night. i am paralyzed in the middle of the night. things are not even better in the morning, in the dining table, bad-fractioned foods are set. mine is the halved sausage and scrambled egg. mine is the small tofu pudding tumbler.
to continue the things they don’t reason out: i need to accompany my brother to go pee in the bathroom after a horror film. i need to obey him. i am not allowed to answer back. his shirts will be mine after, not just shirt, underwear and pants too. i am not allowed to touch his things, he is allowed to get mine. his toys are his toys– don’t argue. you can’t push him in bed, he might fell flat in the floor but squeezing me is ok, there is a cold wall that will keep gravity on pulling me.
on birthdays (we celebrate it on his day, we are only 3 days apart). he has more friends. we blow the candles at the same time. he got all the flower candies and the action figure decor. mine is the yellow and pink ranger, red ranger belongs to him. i do the dishwashing as soon as i grew capable. he do his chores too, after play. which is another case. i am the one to find and call him to lunch and dinner which is never easy. once he is found you’ll wait until he wins the bet and you must keep your mouth shut. you are taught that you saw him running around playing hide-and-seek.
the piont is, aside for the four year gap struggle and the one according to alfred adler’s theory of birth order of me being the youngest and he being the authority, this brother relationships taught me the social structure of the family. of course i might sound so exaggerated, that is what i expect from the readers because i am to fit years of relationship into paragraphs or two. but the point is, exxagerated or not, you are to play a social role in the society in my case i learned it first in my family.
so there is my social birthday. it is not a one day celebration but sequence of curiosity. learning to reason out using senses. lessons that are not taught but rather felt and yes you are right. i felt bullied by my brother. he actually agreed to that in his letter for me before migrating.
“…maybe thats really how our bonding works out…”
well. now. i think i am at the point of reasoning out maturely and i could write down that brotherly quarrel smiling about the silly things we do.
