My brother Mike is a no-nonsense kind of guy.  He likes things to be solid, concrete and material.  He’s not given to flights of fancy as a general rule.  He prefers non-fiction to fiction, hands-on to theoretical, and when he works, he likes to have a finished product to look at and touch and point to afterward.  He builds custom log homes for a living.

He’s really smart, and doesn’t mind thinking.  He’s quite good at it.  It’s just that he likes to eventually be able to see and touch the product of those thoughts.

From the time we were kids until the present, he’s ridiculed my love of science fiction.  He would say:

“I don’t like those books you read, with clones and spaceships and time travel.  I prefer to live in reality.”

Well, we actually had space ships at the time, as evidenced by the model of the Space shuttle that was given to him for Christmas, and which he left laying around his room in casual disregard of what a wonderful thing it was.  I was infernally jealous.  How could someone give him such a wonderful gift that he was so completely unable to appreciate?  They gave me a hair dryer, which sat mostly unused for about fifteen years until I figured out I could use it to extend my children’s winter outside play time.

They loved to play outside, but even bundled up in their snow suits, they would get cold and want to come in.  By the time we got the snowsuits, hats, mittens, sweaters, boots, long underwear, etc off, they would be warm again and ready to go outside.   After a couple of marathon dressing-undressing-dressing sessions, I hit upon the idea to dig my blow dryer out of the box under the stairs in the corner of the basement, dust off the cob-webs, and placed it on the window sill by the back door.

When the kids came in, cold and shivering and saying they were too cold to play outside, I’d set the dryer to “warm”, unzip a small portion of the snowsuit, and blow the snowsuit full of warm air.  Then, they could turn around and run outside and play another 20 minutes before coming in for another shot of warm air.

My sister, who was always very appearance conscious was probably mortified that I had gotten such a wonderful machine, and neglected it for years.  I don’t remember what she got that Christmas.  Probably because she was the youngest, and there was no one to envy her for what she received.

Anyway, back to my no-nonsense brother.  When Dolly the sheep was born, the first living breathing artificially created clone, I called him up and yelled triumphantly into the phone “Who's living in reality NOW?”

He said “When the army of clones can get in their spaceship and travel back in time, give me a call.  You can gloat then.”

Well, my long wait for vindication may come to an end yet.  Some day.  And when that time-traveling clone spaceship is built, they will sell models of it in gift shops, and ALL my grandchildren will get one.  Even the girls who would probably prefer whatever is the popular quantum attractiveness-enhancing tool at the time…because you just never know.