A conservative couple who favored their younger son over their older daughter was hit by karma when the boy grew up to become a pain in their neck.
John and Mary were old-fashioned. Everybody on their street was well aware of that fact. They acted differently from their neighbors and had different beliefs.
One of their most important beliefs was that the female child is of lesser importance as compared to the male child. They had two children, a boy named Junior and a girl named Lydia.
Junior was the youngest of the two, but he received all of his parents’ attention and empathy because he was a boy. Lydia was mostly ignored until it was time to get the house chores done. They hardly cared for her, and if she approached them with problems she needed to solve, they would hush her up.
“Mom, my last pair of serviceable pants just got ripped,” she told her mother one day. “Can I have some money to purchase another pair?”
“No you can’t,” her mother said. “Your brother just got a new Playstation console and it was not cheap, you’ll have to manage those pants that way for the time being.”
Later that day, her mother got her to use scissors to shear off her pants at the knees. That way, nobody would know it had gotten ripped.
Lydia lived her life like that; the older her brother got, the more attention and resources her parents spent on him. Meanwhile, they still treated her like the housemaid; it was a behavior her brother, Junior, picked up quickly.
He would order her around, and rather than let her teach him a lesson, her parents would back him up, sometimes they would even go as far as punishing her before him to appease his anger after they got into a fight.
Their fights got so intense one day that her brother revealed his desire to become an only child.“I hate you Lydia and it would have been better had I been the only child dad and mom had to care for,” he said.
“I wish that was the case as well, then you would have to clean up your own mess or have them do it for you instead!” Lydia retorted.
Her answers always annoyed her brother, and it only twisted his mind with more rage towards her. Lydia could only catch a break when she went to stay with her grandfather during the summer.
Junior usually went to a well-funded music camp, but God forbid they spend the same amount of money on Lydia, so they just handed her over to her granddad, who loved her very much.
Like Lydia, his parents ignored him and only remembered to call him when they needed a favor. One time after summer ended, her parents failed to pick her up from her grandpa. It made her sad, but her grandfather cheered her up by taking her shopping.
She was extremely happy because all her clothes had become too patched for continued use. It made her decide to remain permanently with him, and she called her parents to let them know. “Dad, mom, I just wanted to let you know I prefer to remain with grandpa for some more time,” she told them over the phone.
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