Oh, the pain of being married to a firstborn!

We, the firstborns, tend to feel like parents. We are aware that our younger siblings roll their eyes after our retreating backs.

My younger sister, as all last-born siblings do, gave me grief. You know that sibling, the one that has a hundred and twenty friends that she’s always entertaining in your tiny servants’ quarters while you are away slaving in a merciless job so that you can pay her school fees?
That sibling whom you gave all of your Sh18,000 monthly gross pay to pay her college tuition, only to call the college months later and learn that she had never set foot in the school, and instead had taken on a Deejaying job?

I am talking about that sibling that cut short your childhood because you had to watch over her while she played to her heart’s content. The one who thinks you are so old-fashioned that you need to ease up about life.

Lucky you, if you are an only child, because then, that makes you the last-born child too, pampered, never lacking anything. 

We, the firstborns, tend to feel like parents. We are aware that our younger siblings roll their eyes after our retreating backs because they think we are the snitch that told on them to our parents.

Chances are indeed we are the ones that reported on their misdeeds, though. They think we have a holier than thou attitude and that we are so stuck up even the wind is afraid of blowing on our faces. And they are right. Blame our parents, who, with every additional child they brought forth, forced us to be the mini parents.

“You are the eldest, so you must set a good example to the children.” 

BY THE BOOK

That was the mantra that raised me.

This kind of pressure makes firstborns pursuers of perfection, hard on themselves and others and very unforgiving if, in their opinion, you are not pulling your weight.

Then yours truly, with all her firstborn persona and teacher training to boot, gets into a marriage, not with a fellow firstborn, but with a middle-born.

Now, ‘middle-borns’, who are kind of forgotten more than half the time as the firstborn got the accolades and the last-borns get the pampering, tend to be rebellious. They are most definitely not keen on following the footsteps of the goody two shoes of the firstborn. And how they relax the rules, to the chagrin of a firstborn!

Rarely will you hear of firstborns being expelled from school due to disobedience. We follow the rules to the letter. I lose count of the number of arguments I have had with hubby because he was not living up to my standards of perfection. I know I get into his skin with my constant correction.

Believe it or not, we have had a full-blown argument over the baby car seat.

“Why did you turn the baby seat forward? The baby has to be two years before you can do that!” I yelled as soon as I got into the car.

I expected my husband to immediately comply and turn the baby seat back the way I had placed it.

“Karimi, we are late, can we get moving already!” he snapped, irritated.

“Evidence, based on years of research into car safety, expounds on the proper use of a baby car seat…” I argued. He ignored me.

I know the traffic police would have rewarded me for the case of safety I put forward.

“You need to change it to face the rear until he’s older!” I insisted.

They say men don’t like being ordered around, not by fellow men and most definitely not by a woman, but what’s a couple to do when one is a fastidious firstborn and the other is - how do I put it - easy on the rules?