if not before then. He gave up on having any say. My mom will side with my sister and that's that. I'd say it wasn't long after I left for college. My sister is very, very good at manipulating people, especially our mom. I feel like I'm the only one who sees this, so maybe I'm just crazy. No, not true. My younger brother sees it too. She has always been able to get my mom to do just what she wants.
They've both always been super lenient with her. My best example is the calf feeding deal when I was 12 (she was 8). We had been living on the farm for about two months and our job was to feed the calves in the morning. I'd do the milk and she'd do feed, water, and hay - which was easier and took less time. Good deal. She was usually done before me but if not, I'd help out. Well I figured out that she wasn't actually giving them fresh water and feed every day. I had to feed one calf in their water bucket and I noticed the calf's feed looked "off". Dumped it all out and it was full of maggots. That's not just a day of skipping feed. I was furious. Same with some of the water - she was just refilling it every day and not doing a quick spray and rinse, even if calves had slopped feed, hay, shavings, or **** into it. I told her she needed to go back through, dump out all the feed, clean out the water buckets, and give them fresh feed and water. The calves were my babies and I was just so mad. We'd been helping feed calves for years. This wasn't that it was too hard for her or that she didn't know how, it was just trying to take the quick way out.
So then she was washing buckets on her knees, getting soaking wet - whatever - and I tossed a calf bucket over for her to wash. I wasn't trying to splash her or hit her - we threw them to each other like this every time - but it bounced and the tablespoon of milk left in the bucket splashed her and she ran crying to the barn. She was already ****** about having to do the feed and water again, so the tears came easily. Of course since she'd been sitting on the ground hosing stuff out, she was already soaked. So it looked like I dumped a 5 gallon bucket on her.
I got my *** chewed out for being mean to her and was told that since I wanted to be so damn picky about the feed and water, I could do it by myself. I didn't think expecting maggot and ****-free feed was being picky, but I guess they disagreed. So I did it by myself until I left for college. So what did my sister learn from this? If you do a ****** job, just whine and you'll get out of it forever. Mind you my 6 year old brother had chores he was supposed to complete by himself - he had to bed a whole damn shed by himself - longer and dirtier work than doing feed and water for the baby calves. I distinctly remember him being chewed out when he'd try to short a pen.
There was no teaching her how to do it correctly and saying why it's important to do so, no re-evaluating if one of our parents needed to check down and see that she was doing it well enough/wasn't too much work - just made me do it. Which was fine - I liked feeding calves and I'd just play a radio and sing the whole time.
After that, she didn't have to do anything other than feed the cats until I was 16. Then she had to do feed and hay on the days I went to choir, but nothing at night. She didn't have full-time chores until I left for college.
And I agree completely!
