that is cruel! i hate it when parents show favoritism like that! Like we aren't going to remember that you deprived us! umm.... let's see, probably wanted a super soaker or something. I don't really remember....
I never know how to feel about the whole thing. In the long run, it's just a stupid toy, and I'm no worse off for not having had one more material thing, but if it had been a simple question of "No, you can't have that," it would have been fine - I understood the concept of "We can't afford that," quite well - but like you said, fifteen years later and I still feel the sting of the inequity. I feel so conflicted about it, because my mother came to me before she bought the doll for my sister and told me that she'd buy one for me, too, if I still wanted it (but I was 16 by this point, and it was a bit too late) and then told me that if I felt bad about it, she wouldn't get it for my sister if I didn't want her to - and what the hell is a kid supposed to do with that, I ask you? 'No, don't give my sister the doll she really wants because it makes me feel bad?' What the hell kind of spiteful ***** would that make me? It wasn't my sister's fault, why should she have to suffer? Why even put me in that position? I think ultimately it was to alleviate her own feelings of guilt - like if I said it was ok for my sister to have it, then I had nothing to complain about. It's all so stupid and it shouldn't even bother me, it was so long ago, and she's really a good mom for the most part, but ****, it still stings like crazy.
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