The Height System.

You know when you get chores, responsibilities, and privileges when you are growing up? In my house, living on a farm, we do all that by age. We measure ourselves on the door frame and make sure we stay as short as possible. The shortest do the least amount of work. But I had a growth spurt recently. Luckily, I'm the youngest middle child. My parents measured me. And I hated how the results turned out. "You've grown so much!" They said. "You're much taller than your younger sibling. The same as your next older sibling. So you two will be doing the same chores, responsibilities, and privileges. Congratulations."

I was not happy. I did not want to work at all. In fact, I like being lazy and procrastinating. My older siblings do a ton of work. My sister is like that. So maybe because we'll get the same amount of responsibilities and chores she can do mine too. Working on the farm is hard. My older siblings are always super sweaty from working on the farm all day. From working so hard. We usually have enough money for everything. Our farm is very big. So there's always enough food for us to sell and enough for all of us to eat. With that money then gets determined. There are ten of us altogether.

My oldest sibling is actually already at college. We get homeschooled. Then my parents have saved each of us for us to go to college. We live in Delaware, so we don't have to pay taxes. This is very helpful. We are able to put all that money into many other things. Producing our own food is also very helpful. Unfortunately, paying for food, the house, necessary needs, ten kids, and my sibling's college, there is not much left. We will have to get loans if we go to college too. I know a few of us do not want to go to college, just stay here and help develop the farm and the farm's business.

My oldest sibling's twin, who is two seconds younger, decided that's what they wanted to do as well. Oh yeah, another thing about my parents, is they decided to make all of us gender-neutral. Use they/them pronouns, all of that. My mom is good at buying gender-neutral clothes and making extremely gender-neutral clothes. So we grew up altogether, all of us in the same bedroom. My parents made sure that we always got along. But between all of us, there is always some amount of sibling rivalry. More than half want to be the best and do all the work, the other part wants to just be lazy and look good.

My parents are not very demanding, but they can be very demanding if they really want something done. Like, really want stuff to be done. Unfortunately, due to the height system, we have no other choice but to have all those jobs. Oh yeah, and if your body parts are female, you get to help my mom. If your body parts are male, you help my dad. My mom is inside, my dad is outside. You guessed it, I'm a boy. I have to work outside with the animals and help in the field. My parents say once we are adults, we can decide what gender we are. We just have to move out or be willing to sleep in the tiny closet they call an attic so they don't have to find us our own bedroom.

There are only two bedrooms in the house part of the farm. The one where my siblings and I sleep, and one where my parents sleep in. Theirs is much smaller. We have multiple bunk beds. Our room was originally two, but they had to knock the wall down. The wall was rotting. I think there were some termites too, but hard to tell now. So It fits all of us comfortably now. My parents don't want to try building the wall again. So none of us have an assigned gender. My eldest sibling now goes by their actual gender and name they were given as a baby, but they never come to visit us. In fact, they prefer to not come here at all.

Which is fair enough, there would be nowhere for them to stay but in the barn with the horses and pigs. I wouldn't want to stay in the barn either. Now, we do get privileges when we reach certain heights. If you get to be taller than my mom and you are a girl, you have to work in the field. But you get an extra helping of food. If you get taller than my dad as a boy, you get to do all the work he had to before, and you get all the extra food and a fifteen-minute break in the afternoon and morning. That may not sound like much, but the rest of us are either helping mom or dad or learning. So we don't usually take breaks.

Well, not very often. The shortest/smallest gets the most amount of breaks and the least amount of work. Usually, these are the smallest children and whether they are born male or female, you get to stay inside and help mom. You are the weakest. If you were to do the same amount as everyone else in the family outside or inside, you would probably pass out. However, this is when mom teaches you the most. You still get an education otherwise, you just get more of it when you are the smallest. I do like to work in the field and with my mother. I like to be homeschooled. But sometimes the height system can get a bit out of hand.

There are times when you can be very big at a young age. Your brain can't function as well as other kids who have a similar job. Sometimes, working in the house is really what you want and not working in the field. We cannot switch it off, that would be too confusing. So instead, we have no choice but to do whatever our parents tell us. And overall, I am pretty ok with it. Being lazy is not my family's fault. That's one of the first things I was taught. And it's stuck with me for a very long amount of time.