My Oldest Sibling Complex

So I'm Tara, and for fourteen years I was the creative director of an advertising agency in Oklahoma City, but now, Kathleen and I run our own business, Braid Creative & Consulting, together. You can read about how we decided to finally take the jump and go out on our own, here.

It's sort of a big deal. Well, a big deal for living a very normal life in the middle of the kind-of-south-kind-of-midwest (Oklahoma weirdly doesn't really fit in one description or the other), while still getting paid to be creative.

My thirty-five years of being a perfect, precocious (if not a bit pissy) first-born child prepared me well for this role. Yes, I like extra credit. Yes, I could read at age two. Yes, I like winning science fairs and drawing contests and solo & ensemble competitions (that's a band thing). And, yes... I like being the boss. Basically, if Tara ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

I get to write, and concept all sorts of cool stuff. I get to produce television commercials. Basically my preteen advertising career fantasy, sparked by the late eighties yuppie-angsty television series, thirtysomething (da-da, da, da... da-da, da, da... remember that theme song?) has come true.

My job aside, I've always dreamed about being thirty-something. I know, I know, I am also really influenced by television shows. Come to think of it, I also fantasize about being a chic old lady with flowing, layered Bea Arthur style outfits like on Golden Girls.

Part of the package are my own kids. (Not the Golden Girls package... that involves moving to a split-level house with palm tree wallpaper and white lacquered wicker furniture and hooking up with a string of random guest-star widowers.)

However, Charlie and Sam are part of the reason I am definitely still my parents' favorite.

Hello? Can anyone say first grandchildren in the entire family? Ahh, the cycle of precociousness continues. Although reading at age two is apparently not just magically, genetically passed down... dang.

Second reason I'm still my parents' favorite? I still win stuff every once in a while, for achieving, like... achievement.

I mean, don't I just look like a total Pollyanna? I call these photos, "evolution of a goody two shoes."

But as much as I may seem like the center of my own world, my brother and sister are even bigger centers of theirs. You'd think we'd send each other careening off into space, our self-absorbed gravities completely at odds with each other, like magnets that repel instead of attract.

But "oldest, middle, youngest" we just, well... stick.

More Tara stories:



- My love of beanies and fake food in Brownie Points. Bacon Badges.
- My other half in My Husband Works For The Empire.
- My mommy/homemade side in Cookie Robot. Closet Robot.