The Graff Twins

One crawled first, then the other. One walked first, then the other. Twins Jacob and Ruthie Graff, juniors at Skyline and Community respectively, have been competing with each other since birth. Their competitive spirit has appeared in everything from knowing NCAA rules and regulations to academics. Ruthie feels she has a greater disadvantage in being a girl. “I feel like I have more to prove than he does. Just because I’m a girl. I feel like he does really well in baseball but I have to do even better in softball because it’s not the same,” said Ruthie. 

Although Ruthie and Jacob are very competitive with each other, their parents have never fueled the competition. “If they were more competitive it would put more pressure on us and I think that’s the last thing we need – especially right now, going through the ACT, SAT, high school sports,” said Jacob.

Even though their parents never supported the competition, sometimes the teachers would. One teacher would always say “twin versus twin” when handing back tests to Jacob and Ruthie. Ruthie still holds this resentment today. “I didn’t like that. I hated her. And I didn’t like science in middle school so I generally did worse so I didn’t like that she’d always say, ‘Oh Ruthie, do better to keep up with Jacob’”. Although Ruthie still has harsh feelings for the class, Jacob’s differ. “[I liked it] because I was winning. And just that competitive nature; I wanted to win. I was mad if she got a better score than I did, which rarely happened in science.”

The Tank Family

Aidan Tank, a junior at Community High School, is the oldest of four children: Tank, a 13 year old brother, an eight year old sister, and a two year old sister. The age gap in between Tank and his youngest sister is 14 years. Both of his parents work.

As the oldest sibling Tank often has more responsibility, “I feel like I’m the one who always has to clean up, my parents are working all the time. I guess that I’m the one who has to lay down the rules,” said Tank.

Even though Tank has to lay down the law for his little siblings, as the oldest he has much more freedom. “I hear stories about other siblings and you always hear how [younger siblings]

try to follow the older sibling, or live up to them. It’s nice being the oldest and having control. [It’s] nice that I get to do what I want in the house because I’m the oldest,” explained Tank.

Tank understands that having a large family with two working parents is difficult. “Having more children is tougher for parents so they have to put in additional rules that typically only one child wouldn’t have to,” said Tank. But even through the adversity, Tank maintains a good relationship with his siblings. “I feel like our family works really well together,” said Tank.

The Fall Family

“It’s a middle child thing,” said Sofia Fall, a sophomore at Community High School. Fall is the middle of her three sisters: Eva, age 16, Gloria, age 13, and Sabina, age 11. While some find that being the middle child is difficult, Fall likes it. She is able to have a close relationship with her older and younger sisters.

Although Fall is close with all of her siblings, her family believes she is especially close with Gloria. “A lot of my family says that Gloria (the other middle sister) and I are clique-y and I think it is just because we get along well and like to do the same things,” commented Fall.

Stereotypically, the eldest child takes on the most responsibility, but Fall does not think that is true with her family. “I feel like I have a lot more responsibility over my siblings than my older sister. I think it has a lot to do with me and my personality as well as Eva and hers,” said Fall. “I have always been more uptight than my older sister, but I think that we are good together.”

Even though Fall believes she takes on more responsibility than her older sister, she still thinks that their relationship is good. “Eva is more impulsive and I am more reserved so we balance each other out well,” Fall explained.