Facebook's good for something after all

Michael looks like a young offender in all of Cousin Charlotte's posed shots from Sean's wedding, but this shot of the Elms boys is just too cute to pass up.

It seems to me that David should be about twelve years old, but you will recall that I am still suffering from the delusion that Ben is Michael's age. That's David's daughter, Leah.

Sean was a year ahead of me in high school, and everyone used to confuse him with Steve. This is probably because he has a bigger personality than Steve does: while Steve will sit quietly in the back of the room, Sean will demand loudly that someone join him as he dances on the table. If you never get close, he's definitely the one you'd remember. From time to time someone would ambush me near homeroom and say she didn't know I was going out with that Elms guy -- how long had we been together? Surprised, I would stammer out some variant of "a year", and Little Miss Cheerleader would be halfway down the hall before I figured out that I had just started a rumour that Sean was cheating on whatever girlfriend he had at the time.

Sean moved to the NWT soon after we did and was living with us throughout my pregnancy and after Michael was born. If this was a "bookended" news story, this is where I would triumphantly close the loop by noting that he used to work at the young-offender facility, but you, dear readers, deserve better than that. Sean quickly proved himself to be the best substitute teacher in town as well as the only uncle Michael knew as a baby. He kept us well-stocked with tiny Maple Leafs jerseys and homemade baby-sized hockey sticks. I was really sad when he moved out of our house: after fourteen years, he is like my brother too.