Being the oldest of five comes with a lot of responsibilities. You never have any privacy. Your parents give you the hardest chores. You have to baby sit. A lot. There is also this tendency to feel old sometimes when you realize all of your siblings are growing up too. They get bigger and can do things like wear your clothes or take your phone charger or go to a school dance. The worst part is you don't even realize they are that much older until later when you get your superman sweater back and your sister had covered it in mustard and then tried to blame it on you and you don't even like mustard!

There are however a lot of ups. You get new clothes because their hand-me-downs wouldn't fit you. You get to do everything first like get a phone or a car. You get to order off the adult menu first too and that is satisfying. Who doesn't like the idea of having their parents spend money on the exact same amount of food? Your parents don't, that's for sure. Then your siblings get old enough and then you and your parents aren't happy.

Cooking is a big part of feeding the herd and occasionally your parents don't want to cook or they don't like to and after a few years, you tend to come to this realization that four tiny monsters make not so tiny messes and instead of letting them do dinner you might want to do it for them yourself because as the oldest if the others wreck the kitchen then that chore could very likely fall on you (we older siblings have all faced this struggle). The hardship of their messes falling on us are often, many, and often times really gross.We love them but seriously? How do you forget to put water in Ramen noodles and have them catch on fire? I don't know how they do the things they do and I think I can speak for anyone with a younger sibling when I say that.

Let's not forget about the endless war over chargers and earbuds. It will never end because no matter what they will always be slightly less responsible and lose or break their things and the first idea that pops into their brains is to just "borrow" ours. The problem with this is your parents don't care unless someone takes theirs then something evil has been unleashed. It's not to fun to have someone else "remember" they took it only an hour long speech on respecting your parents things when you weren't even the one that violated it in the first place!

Regardless of how annoying your siblings may be, you will always love them. Your life wouldn't be nearly as interesting without them. Plus, then you couldn't blame them for forgetting to take out the trash or walk the dog. Especially in the morning when you are too tired to move. I love them and all of their quirks and you should love yours.