h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Small, moderately relevant anecdote: my mother was collecting my six year old brother from school recently when the mother of another child (who had recently visited us) came to speak to her. The mother in question then said something along the lines of 'Why don't your children fight all the time, seeing as they have different fathers?'. My mother was mightily peeved, as indeed was I...

My parents divorced when I was six, and I was their only child. Both of my parents have subsequently remarried, and my mother has had two more children. I have always referred to these children as my brother and sister, not my half brother and sister, because frankly, what difference does it make? We get on a hell of a lot better than a lot of people I know who share both parents. There's a big age gap between us all - I'm nearly thirteen years older than my brother (which leads to a lot of embarrassing situations in which people think he's my son ), but my younger siblings often treat me - probably justifiably - like an eight year old. When they were younger, it was just taken as read by my siblings that 'Chee-Chee has two daddies', which indeed is true - my mother's present partner has treated me as his own, for which I am incredibly grateful, whilst my siblings refer to my natural father as 'Chek-Chek' - the Chinese for 'uncle'. I even changed my surname when my sister started to wonder why I had a different name to her. My brother and sister are the people who I feel are most important to me, and it does upset me when people say 'but they're not *really* your brother and sister', because they *are*.