Just a thing that my mind do

In my family, I'm the youngest person in my generation: the youngest cousin, the youngest sibling, the youngest step-sibling. My oldest first cousin -- someone who from a generational standpoint is supposed to be "my age" -- turns 50 this year. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm likely the benchmark for making the family members in my peer group groan about their oldness. (e.g., "Little Linda's almost 30? I'm so oooooold.")

When you're The Young One, you're basically never the family trailblazer. For example, before I graduated college, I'd already been to half a dozen weddings of relatives "my age," as the older members of my cohort plodded into the marriageable age bracket before me. For a number of those weddings, I was not only an attendee but also part of the family, and so there are a lot of photos of me in various stages of pubescence and teenagerdom, smiling from the outskirts of large-group family wedding photos. (It's a visual cavalcade of personal fashion embarrassments. Looking at many of the dresses and skirt/blouse sets I wore, you'd think someone grabbed an Amish girl on her second day of rumspringa, set her in front of a Kohl's rack, and told her to pick out something fetching.)

I have a half-baked theory that if you're both self-aware and a Young One, you're likely to come to grips early with the reality that you're always walking in someone else's footsteps. Even if you deviate from the path set by your elders, you will be seen as deviating from a path. (In school, younger siblings are constantly encountering either knowing smiles of recognition or raised eyebrows of surprise from teachers who had their older siblings in class.) Canny Young Ones study the footsteps and reap the benefits. On a number of occasions, my sister and I have discussed how she functions as my own personal "dry run." She navigated high school, went to college, got married, had a baby. Meanwhile, I've skulked behind her, taking notes.

This dynamic lessens with time. Even if you're close with your siblings and cousins, once you're out of school, you splinter. You pursue different careers and get to know different people. You achieve life milestones that don't correspond with birth order. Basically, you become an adult. Birth order isn't destiny.

Still, I'm a person who likes learning by example. I like being presented with a structure, even if I'm then free to rip it apart. A happy Linda is a Linda with a frame of reference.