The Good, The Bad, And The (Mostly) Ugly That Comes With Having Siblings
It's a blessing and a curse to grow up with siblings. If you're an only child, you have your parents' full attention, and there's never any competition over who gets to control the remote or who gets to eat the last slice of pizza.
Even with all the arguments, having a sibling means you have someone who gets all your family's inside jokes and knows 'the look' you give when aunt Ruth has one too many over Christmas dinner. If you have a brother or sister, you know exactly what these people are going through.
You Can't Trust Them
So young. So naive. This little boy is going to learn a few life lessons in a couple of seconds, one of which includes never trust your sister.
You can see that devious smile on her face, and you can see that the little boy is also smiling, but we would love to see if he was still smiling once she uncoiled that part of the hose. Do you think this is the first time she pulled this trick or is it a recurring event?
But Sometimes You're The Victim Of Those Jokes
Often times, younger siblings need to be able to adapt and outsmart their older siblings. You probably couldn't take your older brother in a fight but you could outwit him and cause a little bit of chaos, which is exactly what this brother did. He probably had some explaining to do afterward, but it was definitely worth it.
The only downside to this prank is that they probably got yelled at for using an entire cartridge of ink to print out one sign.
Your Food Is Never Safe
The rule of 'it's never safe' really applies to any food in your house, especially if you have brothers. They're going to eat everything they can find so you better be prepared to store some snacks in your room.
Anything and everything is fair game when it comes to boys, regardless of if it was your food or your parents bought your favorite snack or it was something they were told not to eat. Doesn't matter!
You Have To Protect What You Love
Quite frankly, growing up with siblings means your leftovers are never safe because any good sibling knows that you should always go for your brother's or sister's food before your own! If they took the risk of leaving it in the fridge, that's on them.
For the more timid siblings, another way to steal food is to move the leftovers to a different fridge or hide it in the fridge, and if they don't notice within a day or two, it's fair game. It clearly didn't mean that much to them anyway.
You Can't Rely On Them To Be Fair
This picture is all you need to know about having siblings. "Well if you get to cut it then I get to choose first that's the rule!" Sound familiar?
Having siblings means you're constantly tapping into the pettiest side of yourself, which could mean something different for everyone. In this case, it means bringing out a ruler because you don't trust your siblings and you need to make sure it's cut exactly in the middle.
You Know Them So Well
One user shared this photo captioned "exactly 27 years ago, my mom took the perfect picture of me and my sister. Some things never change."
The great thing about having siblings is that you have the opportunity to know someone in a way that no one else ever will. You can anticipate their every move. Maybe you need to stop them from blowing out your birthday candle, but you also know when they need your help and they know how to make you laugh when you're feeling sad.
Your Feelings Towards Them Vary From Day To Day
Having siblings is a complicated business. It's really more like "I'll help you hide the body" or "I'm going to need help hiding your body."
You love them. You hate them. You get inexplicable joy from annoying them but you also don't know what you'd do without them. Some days all you want is to spend time with your brother and other days you want to lock your sister out of the house (and maybe you do.) You just have to find that balance!
Sometimes Your Pranks Don't Always Go As Planned
"I once told my younger brother that the laundry chute was just like a water slide and somehow convinced him to go down it. He ended up falling headfirst down two floors and hitting his head on the washing machine so hard he dented it" wrote user Hannah. Ouch.
That's when the "please don't tell mom, please don't tell mom. You're okay, right? You're fine!" comes into play. Pure panic sets in. Your brother is crying, and you're trying to figure out how to explain this.
They're Always Sensitive To How You're Feeling
You're probably wondering what this pirate is doing, right? One Reddit user shared this photo of his brother who dressed up as a pirate when he came to visit him at the hospital... after he got his leg amputated. No one expects their brother to be sensitive but if there was ever a time to be, now would've been that time.
Luckily, the Redditor was able to laugh about it and shared his own story about the time his brother (the pirate) "broke a couple of vertebrae biking" and he told him to "take some Advil and get over it."
You Can Count On Your Siblings For Advice Or Help
One good thing about having siblings is you can always count on them for advice. There's no guarantee that it's going to be good advice or that it'll be helpful to you in any way, but if you send them a text like this, you're definitely going to get a text back or a phone call.
You might even end up being able to convince your sibling to help you capture the live, healthy, adult, probably pregnant squirrel, and then you'll have an accomplice if anything goes awry.
This Shouldn't Be Awkward
Why do brothers have to ruin everything? His sibling was just trying to do a nice thing and then this man had to go and ruin it.
The backstory for this one? The signholder was deployed in Texas on Active Duty with the Air Force so his brother thought it'd be nice to fly out from California to visit him. We're thinking he might have regretted his decision once he saw this sign.
Sometimes Younger Siblings Have All The Power
If you don't have siblings you'll never understand the pure panic and anxiety that comes after you're fighting with your sibling and then someone actually gets hurt. This tweet is dead accurate, especially "you can hit me back."
Every younger sibling has been the victim of a nudge that was more like a shove or a tap that was more like a slap, but the upside was hearing your sibling exclaiming "please don't tell mom, I didn't even hit you that hard, you're okay, please don't tell mom."
You Love To Prank Them
There's no greater love than a love between two sisters. How you actually define love is up to you, like in this case a sister who just wanted to make sure her sister could tell the difference between crayons and food.
Marissa Lynn wrote, "I convinced my sister when she was three that the crayons that were named after foods actually tasted like that food. I later found her crying with a mouthful of chewed crayon." That's love!
You May Have To Pay A Price
You should be able to count on your siblings for pretty much anything, even if it's a trip to the emergency room. However, even when you need a favor from them, siblings always see an opportunity to get something out of it for themselves. That's the rule of thumb.
The problem is you'll never be able to escape them, you're stuck with them forever so don't make a deal you can't keep otherwise you'll be hearing about it for the next 40 years.
You Can Mooch Off Of The 'Successful' Sibling
Having siblings means you can guilt them into sharing their Netflix/Hulu/HBO passwords with you, but that doesn't mean they have to be happy about it.
In this case, one freeloading Reddit user shared what his brother renamed the Netflix profiles, and there seems to be some passive-aggressive energy here. At least he only changed the names and not the password right? Then everyone would be in for a real fight.
You Can Count On Them To Get Your Jokes
Having siblings also means you can be the subject of some funny pranks or situations, like this Reddit user who always exchanges ironic gifts with their siblings for Christmas. Their younger sister won hands down with this one.
The user also said, "another fun thing we do is wrap [things] which people forget at each other's places and give it back to them for Christmas, you win if the person doesn't realize that their gift is something they lost through the course of the year." The real gift is having funny siblings.
And You Just Have To Accept That
Siblings can be really great at reminding you of exactly where you stand on the family totem pole or knocking you down a few pegs when you get too confident.
Someone's brother gave this card to them for their high school graduation but clearly didn't want them to get too big of a head over it. Sure you graduated from high school and I'll give you upwards of 20 bucks for it but also don't forget you had no choice.
Siblings Have To Suffer Through Your Weird Jokes
Someone posted this photo on Reddit captioned "my brother mailed me a potato again." We're curious about how many times this has happened, but that's beside the point.
You can always count on your siblings to be the victim of your weird antics, that's the beauty of having them. Feel like mailing a potato to someone but don't want your friends to know how weird you are? Send it to your brother or sister!
You Can Trick Them Into Anything
Having siblings can also teach you to be more resilient as a child because you have to deal with everything they throw at you, especially if you have brothers. Sisters can be rough, but they're different than brothers.
You can't convince us this brother didn't know his sister would eat the grasshopper either. He knew she would, that's why he dared her to. She came out of the situation thinking she won because she did something she was dared to do, but who's the real winner here? Certainly not the grasshopper...
You Can't Help But Love Them
No matter how much they annoy you though, they're your siblings and you love them for all their weird, crazy, unexpected antics, like this sister who shared photos of her little brother that plays dead whenever their mom gets mad! You have to love him. How could you not?
Even if you don't always like them, you're stuck with them for life. All you can do sometimes is sit back and laugh.
