What does the word spare conjure up in your mind? As Harry’s book is coming out tomorrow the 10th but what does he mean?
Look it up and you will find lots of meanings, spare cash, spare part, there’s the term, “you’re as useless as a spare pr**k at a wedding” (I’ve been called that many times in my youth)
“A fish out of water” “surplus to requirements” “a misfit”
I think this type of thinking is very real in the younger brother’s situation, I know that I felt like the spare and was called that many times growing up.
Being a couple of years younger in the early years makes it impossible to catch up so you’re never going to be as good as your older brother and everybody lets you know that.
Feeling like shite for years can break you up never to have the relationship you would like with each other, yet if parents gave it a bit more thought it could avoid conflict for the rest of their children’s lives.
This situation is in many families with the brothers splitting up, very often the more one brother exceeds or is first in line to take over the family business the other goes in the opposite direction, sometimes with drugs alcohol then into depression yet, on the other hand, the same people can be self-motivated to prove to themselves that they can be as good if not better as their sibling.
Whichever way they go they usually succeed in their endeavours, spectacularly.