looking to the future

So I'm sitting here with a baby laying in my lap, and I just perused my youngest brother, Thorin's, "My Space" website.
My youngest brother. The one who was barely in middleschool when I moved away. The little boy with the runny nose that no one ever watched very closely. The one strangers would bring home because they found him crossing mainstreet by himself at the age of three. (My fault, yes, I was supposed to be watching him.)
I still picture Thorin as an obnoxious little boy, maybe not a dirty three-year-old, but at least someone who would steal stuff from my room and innocently claim that he thought it was his.
So I'm looking at his site, and reading about bands he likes, looking at pictures of friends that look way too old to be friends with my brother. They've got to be like seventeen! (Oh wait, he's almost seventeen.) Actually, I know some of them aren't his friends and he just put their pictures on there because he thought they were cool, but thats another story.
Sure he's the same boy. Just older, slightly more well rounded. He played a harmonica with a hobo in Salt Lake a few weeks ago, just for fun. He plays the guitar and the trumpet too, though I've never heard them. He's been in school plays, and sings in a choir. Oh, and he has dressed like a Sith for school-light-sabre and all- and he claims the freshmen thought he was really cool.
And I wonder, "When did Thorin become a real person?" Which brings me back to the little baby on my lap. Sure, now she's sweet (unless her diaper is full) and innocent (except of that spit-up on my leg) but who will she be in ten or fifteen years? Current trends seem to indicate, that someday little Elora will be a real person too.


Will she be more interesting than I was? Lets hope so. Will she be cooler than Thorin? Well, only if she knows more about Jedi mind tricks and intergalactic fashion than he does. Maybe cool isn't what we should be aiming for. Lets go for happy and well-liked.