Picket Fence Post

Three for Thursdays (or Four for Fridays if I don’t post on Thursday) will be a regular feature here on the Picket Fence Post. This feature will include newsy/fun/intriguing items that I stumbled upon in the past week. If you happen to see something — an interesting news story, a funny video, an outrage, etc. — that you think would be perfect for Three for Thursdays, please be sure to send it my way.

Item #1: Grey’s Finale

Will Meredith and Derek finally end the on-again/off-again romantic dance and commit already? Certainly the challenges of being a couple can provide drama and comedy, if it didn’t, then Mad About You would’ve been canceled after its pilot episode. Will Miranda figure out a way to repair her relationship with her estranged husband and reunite her family? Will Christina emerge from her “Like a Virgin”-singing funk? We’ll find out tonight in the Grey’s Anatomy finale. But, as with most bonus-sized finales — tonight’s show is two hours long — they tend to disappoint. Hopefully that won’t be the case tonight. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that nothing totally absurd will happen. Like Gizzie, part II.

Item #2: First-Born Rule-Followers and Their Strict ‘Rents

I KNEW IT! As the oldest child in my own family, I’ve always felt as though it’s harder to be the older kid than the younger one, even when you factor the hand-me-downs into the picture. Now a study in the latest issue of the Economic Journal confirms it.

“The study showed that older siblings were much less likely to drop out of school or, in the case of girls, get pregnant, than the youngest in the family, perhaps because of a lifetime of being held to higher standards,” reported MSNBC. “That stricter parenting style [used with the older child] often shapes the first-born kid into a play-by-the-rules perfectionist.”

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