“…it was hard for me to get some peace and quiet—somepony was always bugging me in one way or another! I’d get wrestled to the ground by my hyperactive twerp of a brother Vic. Weepy always found some excuse to cry, and I swear she almost flooded the house several times. Drumbeat never liked to turn the volume down, and I suspect that he always stole my earplugs. Ringaling’s my older sister, and yet I always had to remind her to do this or that because she was a forgetful airhead. Round was hit-or-miss, as we both loved a good story and could bond over that, but other times she’d kick me out of her room because moody teenage girls don’t mix well with annoying little brothers.

“I had to deal with Middie’s terrifying pranks, Stan the anti-diaper activist, Crash living up to his name, and the worst of them all… the oldest brother, Barkin Orders. Because Mom and Dad worked a lot, he was in charge all the time, and he had a temper that was set off easily. I swear, we did chores all the time under him, and he was just the most persnickety pony when inspecting our work. He sees one speck of dust, start all over. You rebel, he takes your favorite things and stores them in his closet. You protest, you’re on diaper changing duty. Keep on fighting in spite of that… well, you run laps or do twenty of some exercise. In hindsight, it did help when we had that ‘Adventu-cation’, but I still hated it.

“Still, I can’t imagine my foalhood any other way, and there were times where we all had fun together. One that sticks out in my mind is when they all came with me to my first book convention, the day before Bark left for military school. Granted, they wrecked everything, and I was so angry it wasn’t funny, but I was admittedly touched when they got me a new book as an apology. Bark had chosen it because he thought it looked fun, and the protagonist looked kinda like me, but I’m not gonna lie, ‘Daring Do and the Sapphire Stone’ became an instant favorite of mine. Despite how much they get under my skin, I just remember that moment to remind myself that, well, they’re not so bad.

“…okay, it doesn’t stop them from being embarrassing. Even as adults, they all still have a screw loose!”