Crime family

In a passel of 10 kids, one learns the fine points of foraging, opportunism and guile.

By Paul Donnelly

May 4, 2001 | With five brothers and four sisters living in one house with two parents -- a great archetypal urban Irish Catholic microcosm -- I was instructed early in religion, values and common sense. We saw the importance of prioritizing and of getting along with others. Nothing teaches cooperation, planning ahead and the cutthroat side of togetherness like a bathroom and a half for 12 people -- especially with somebody in the shower. In my family, "I'm in here" was an existential absolute, and "Go upstairs" and "You have to wait your turn" were pieces of advice full of Life Lessons. We also were told, "Don't be stupid" and "Be good."

So what did I learn from earliest youth? Well, I learned crime.

Except at first it was more like foraging, a kind of genetically qualified hunting and gathering process. If you needed something for school -- a copy of "A Separate Peace," for example -- the odds were it was already in the house someplace. Try the attic.

It started with my parents -- my mother, to be more precise. Margaret Mary Coleman Donnelly raised 10 children who neatly filled out the entire baby boom demographic -- her first was born in 1946, the last in 1963 (and I, in the peak year of 1957). She initiated the foraging-borrowing-theft evolutionary process by strenuously avoiding the purchase of new clothes. Her first child was a girl who needed new clothes, but -- prudently -- the next was also a girl, and that first set of hand-me-downs provided a model of efficiency that lasted a quarter-century. A first son followed the second girl, and he was followed by three more boys before my mom alternated for nearly a decade to round out the clan to 6-4, advantage boys.

By the time I came along, the eighth of 10, neighborhood adults could identify us more reliably by our clothes than by our faces. Shirts and coats, especially kids fashions in the '50s and most of the '60s, didn't change much, but I do recall wearing an ancient sweat shirt in seventh grade that had belonged to my brother John, who was eight years older than I. It made me look like Dobie Gillis in the Age of Aquarius.

We were sort of a socialist dictatorship in which Mom set all the production quotas and allocated the harvest. But we had no ambition to be a classless society -- everything was executed in strict birth order. My mother's approach was simple: From each according to his growth spurt, to each according to his grade. Excepting only two -- the oldest boy and the oldest girl -- we all wore hand-me-downs at some point, and there was a rough balance of nature to it. About the time Bobby outgrew a coat, Timmy would need one -- that was the theory.

This enduring cycle taught us the law of unintended consequences, better known in my family as the Turtleneck Rule. My mom liked turtlenecks, and bought them for us on our birthdays. None of us wore them, which meant they never wore out. So the least popular clothing was the most common. As we "outgrew" them, the turtlenecks would be passed down in the twice-weekly Redistribution of Resources (read: Folding of the Laundry). By the time Mom gave up there were enough turtlenecks to fill the huge blue barrel she kept in an attic closet for Goodwill donations.

Hand-me-downs, and my mother's habit of calling us by other siblings' names (I was JohnBobbyTimmyChrisPaul), taught us that all property -- even names -- is fungible in the right circumstances. This knowledge was supplemented, as so often is the case, with lessons about opportunism. If you want an Oreo, take it now because even a new package could vanish without warning.

We also learned a primitive, feudal kind of entrepreneurship: My mother loved Mr. Goodbars, and would futilely attempt to hide them under a chair in the living room. She really loved those things -- at Halloween, we would empty our candy in separate heaps and trade (anything with coconut was in play), but the Mr. Goodbars were her tribute. Her carpet, I suppose. So, like rebellious vassals or proto-capitalist commissars on the collective farm, we watched for our opportunities and we took 'em.

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