I’m Penelopey Mitchell, and I’m 26 now. Growing up, I had parents, obviously, Jennifer and Robert Mitchell. And I had an older sister, Olivia, who’s four years older than me. She’s 30 now, married to some guy named Derek, and they’ve got twin boys who just turned four.
But here’s the thing about my childhood that really screwed with my head for years: from the moment I could understand words, I was compared to Olivia. Every single day. She was the golden child, the one who could do no wrong.
When she brought home straight A’s in fifth grade, my parents threw her a pizza party and bought her a new bike. When I brought home straight A’s two years later, my mom just said it was expected and that Olivia had done it first.
Anyway, I remember when I was 8 and Olivia was 12. We both played soccer. She scored three goals in one game, and my dad wouldn’t shut up about it for weeks. He told everyone at his office, all our relatives, even the neighbors. When I scored four goals in my game the next month, he just nodded and said that was nice.
At home, it was even worse. Every decision, every family discussion, Olivia’s opinion was what mattered. When I was 13, I really wanted to paint my bedroom this light blue color. I’d been saving up my allowance to buy the paint myself, but Olivia said it would look ugly and clash with the hallway, and my parents immediately shut down the idea. Meanwhile, when Olivia wanted to knock down a wall in her room to make it bigger when she was 16, they hired contractors and did it without question.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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