My brother is growing up and leaving me in the dust

I find it so much easier to tell the whole cyber world how much I admire & respect my 17 yr old brother K than say it to his grinning face. We’re still at the stage where we annoy it each other to no end and the only way we show that we love each other is asking ‘are you okay?’ after delivering a hard punch that knocks ‘em sideways. Call it sibling rivalry or being fed up after living with each other so long - one of us has seriously got to move. I hope he gets the hint soon. Anyway, he’s head and shoulder above a lot of his peers. He graduated this July in the honour roll with a $1000 scholarship, volunteers both as at a neighbourhood center as a tutor/buddy to school children and at a community policing center doing paperwork, foot, and bike patrols around the area. He is also working two jobs at the same time - as a cashier at a high end leather store and a camp counselor for day camp. He’s been working at this camp for two years now - his grade 11 and 12 summers. Of course he’s saved up money so that he could pay for a criminal justice program he’s been accepted into last week that will start this fall. He wanted to be a cop against the criticisms from a lot of family and relatives ever since he was 6 years old and his determination, perseverance against every obstacle that was thrown at him and (unlike me) his ability to ignore people’s bad advice surprises me all the time. He knows what he wants and he goes after it - no matter what he is doing, the goal is always within sight. When he was in grade 8 even, he used to go around the libraries looking for books about policing or the experiences of cops in the field and just read for days. He looks up schools, law programs, and sometimes even does the police tests on-line. I have never seen someone who is that dedicated to something that he would spend so much time, energy researching about it way before he needed to. It’s like being a cop is bred into his bones. This child is going places.

Trust me, I don’t get pleasure from saying all this and neither is he paying me for blog advertisement. In fact, I’m jealous saying this because when I was his age (4 yrs ago -lol, don’t I sound like an old woman), I was a lazy bum. I was really doing nothing but watching TV, eating and moaning about being bored. I did a little volunteer work although not as extensive and long as him. And what’s amazing is that most people (read: mostly me) thought K was really going to do bad at school. He failed some classes in grade 8 and 9, hardly ever did his homework, and just wasted his time at school socializing and not caring about anything. But fast forward two years - he enters grade 11 and some bug (wish I had it) bit him and he turned into a kind of crazed manic. All of a sudden he cared about his grades, his homework, his assignments. He started going from C's to A’s and B’s. It was an amazing transformation and I think he always knew that college/university considered only grade 11 and 12 marks, so before that he didn’t really care. It’s amazing how this kid thinks and works. He continues to surprise me and he is truly a lesson in not judging people too soon. I mean, he’s my brother and I was so wrong about him in many ways. Imagine how far off the mark I am when it comes to people I’m not so close to?

So, because I am the self-proclaimed best sister in the entire world, I will be taking him to a police museum he doesn’t even know exists in downtown V-City….as long as he pays that is.