The next generation

today i found out that my little brother has a facebook account. apparently all his friends has one too, and he had faked his age in order to create it. however feeling that he was too young to be participating in the world of online social networking, i made him deactivate it. i dont know if i did it because i suddenly felt really protective and duty bound as an older sibling, or because i was scared by how much he had grown up in my absence. it was like i didnt know him at all.

just before i deactivated his account, i scrolled down his page to see what he had been doing. mostly it was just games that he played, and one little girl posting on his wall saying "hah you finally have facebook!" to which my 10 year old brother replied "Lol". God, i didnt even know that he knows what "lol" meant already. It felt like not long ago that i was still teaching him english. Then i scrolled down his page further and there was a photo of me standing with him hanging off my back smiling happily at the camera. it had been taken on our family trip last christmas. it made my heart ache a little. it makes me wonder how he sees me in his eyes. sometimes i feel like i've been a bad brother. im so caught up in my own shit that i forget to spend time with him. i seem to forget that im his role model and the person that he looks up to the most. ive spent increasingly less time at home since uni started 3 years ago, im missing the most important years of his childhood. i hardly take him out these days, or even bother to play xbox with him. we were so close once upon a time. i remember the days when he was just an infant and i would carry him on my back all over avondale. nowdays, i seem to just take him for granted.

i think from now on i will devote more time to hanging out with my little brother. the holidays are coming up, think ill take him somewhere, watch a movie, or maybe go to rainbows end. hes going to be a teenager soon, and if i dont take a more active role in his life now, i might truly find myself one day sitting next to a not so little stranger at the dinner table.