It’s the final week of 2023’s 52 Ancestor in 52 Weeks Challenge, and the prompt is “Me, Myself, and I.” If I was a normal person, I'd tell you about my hobbies outside of genealogy, share a strange fact about myself, or write a brief biographical sketch. Instead, I’m going to share my worst character flaw -- that green-eyed monster, jealousy.
Jealousy has always been a problem for me, though I doubt anyone outside my immediate family knows how bad it is. I felt jealous when anyone so much as looked at one of my boyfriends in high school, or if my bestie made a new friend. If someone has something and I don’t, I want it. It’s not that I don’t want people I care about to have nice things – I do….but I want to have those things too. Even as an itty-bitty kid, I was like this. I’m ashamed that I feel this way, and as an adult I’ve actively tried to be a better person, count my blessings, and all that jazz. As a child, I didn’t have the self control or awareness to talk myself out of being jealous, so that’s probably when I was at my worst. The earliest target of my jealousy? My lovely cousin, Jojo.
She’s probably going to laugh when she reads this! Maybe she’ll even be surprised.
Jojo is the cousin closest to me in age. We're 11 months apart. For nine years, we were the only girls in a long, long line of boy cousins, and we were playmates by default. I wanted to be Jojo in the worst way! I had plain, brown hair, while she had beautiful, pale golden hair like a princess in a storybook. She was younger, and therefore automatically more adorable. I hated that – I wanted to be the young, cute one! Jojo was the luckiest girl in the world because she had an entire house full of pets. My parents didn’t want to deal with creatures growing up, and I was one of those animal-loving kids who needed a pet to nurture. At Jojo’s house there were dogs, cats, bunnies – you name it, she had it. She even got every little girl’s dream – a horse. What little girl doesn’t want a freakin’ horse? I was so envious I couldn’t see straight!
Presents were a huge source of contention. Though I’m older, Jojo’s birthday falls a month before mine. To a child waiting impatiently for her birthday presents, a month is an eternity. Jealous little me had to watch her open all of her presents before I opened mine, which was sheer and utter torture. Our grandparents always bought us the same-but-different gifts. If we got dolls, hers was blonde like her, while mine had boring, brown hair like me. I thought it was grossly unfair she got all these gorgeous blonde dolls and I didn’t, just because I had the misfortune of being born a brunette. I was raised with good manners and never threw a fit or said so much as a word about her presents, but my true feelings are easy to spot in these pictures.
One Christmas, our grandparents gave all of us animal posters for our walls. Jojo got puppies. I got kittens. I liked puppies better than kittens and was not pleased.
About the only time I didn’t get jealous was if we got the same exact thing, like the year E.T. came out and we got giant E.T. stuffies.
Then there were the floozy dolls. Nana was so excited about giving us these near life-size harlots! Add some candy cigarettes and lawn darts and you have the recipe for a perfect early-80's childhood. This was the one and only time I felt I got the better end of the deal. Not only were both dolls blonde, but my doll had a classy, red dress so it was superior to the boogery-green dress on Jojo’s doll. I'm happy in this picture, but I was also wondering what the hell a floozy was because Nana kept saying it over and over and laughing. Our dolls had blue eye shadow (hard to see in the picture) so I assumed a floozy was someone who wore blue eye shadow.
My mom didn’t realize it, but she made matters so much worse. She bought many of my Christmas presents right in front of me and told me they were for Jojo. I remember sitting in the shopping cart surrounded by “Jojo’s gifts,” trying my best not to explode in a fit of jealous rage. God, I was dumb! All of those awesome presents ended up under the tree with my name on them, and I didn’t clue in. It’s not like this happened only once either –Mom “shopped for Jojo” with me several times over a period of years. Like I said, I was dumb!
It probably sounds like I hated Jojo growing up, but it's not true. She was my buddy. We always had fun (and usually got in plenty of trouble) whenever we were together – I was just a selfish little witch who wanted all of her stuff. Hey, I may be jealous and imperfect, but at least I have no problem laughing at myself!
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