Little Brothers

It's my little brother's birthday today.
He and his wife Brenda have 2 kids - an older daughter, Quinn and a younger son - Ronin.

So another little brother with an older sister are coming up through the ranks.











Hopefully older sister Quinn will continue to put her little brother Ronin in his place and continue to be amused at the whacky stuff he does - but at least my brother will be able to help Ronin cope with having an older sister.

Those top photos - first is the requisite "brother in a dress" photo. The middle one is me on lookout as he attempts, at the age of one - to steal my dad's truck in South Africa. The last one is us hanging out on the floor, as all kids do. I think he's wearing the same top I was wearing in the previous photo.

But hopefully Ronin will not speed through his highschool credits for no good reason and end up in the same OAC math class as his older sister.

And hopefully they will both go through their education with their proper birthdates on their official records. Not some date that their parents made up so they could start school early and get out of the house.

I swear I thought that every kid had two birthdays until about grade 6 - one birthday for 'real life' and one for School. My parents only moved mine up one month - from January to the prior December. But they moved my brother's up a full 6 months - from June to the prior December. When he started school my parents just told the teachers that he "was small". Well, yeah - he was really upto 18 months younger than all the other kids! He already knew his alphabet from being left home alone in front of sesame street at the age of 3 for hours at a tme (it was the 70's, okay? No seatbelts, kids left home alone, I remember rolling around in the back of the Gremlin while driving up Yonge street).

The teachers believed it all. Never mind that he probably also knew how to count to ten in Spanish thanks to the Buffalo TV stations we received.

I changed my birthday back to the proper one in grade 11 with no problem. We got our official records and were told to correct any wrong information - so I just told the teacher that my birthday was wrong. Don't know how that happened. Weird.

No problem. They believed me.

I told my brother that it worked for me. No need to continue living the lie.
So he tried to change his, as well.

He was called into the Principal's office.

Guess we had different reputations at school, he and I.

Happy Birthday Mills.

k.