In the Beginning... I knew the score at 4.

By the time I started kindergarten at the grade school across the street from my house, I already started showing signs of being independent. By the time I was 4, I already had lived enough life to know that I was pretty much on my own to fend for myself. When I started school that day, my mother made the effort to walk me across the street and stand in line with me and the other children, along with their mothers as well. As my mother tells the story, I turned around and looked at her and told her she could go home now. I was in line and perfectly fine, and she could just go home now. Even though all of the other kids' parents were sticking around for the doors to open, I felt like I knew what I was doing and was no longer a child. I'm sure I hurt my mother's feelings that day, but more importantly, it was a symptom of a little girl who had taken on so much responsibility already in her young life that standing in line alone for the start of school just didn't seem like that big of a deal. This is just the beginning of a long line of parental responsibility falling unto the oldest child - me.