Eli, Faithful Sidekick

One of the difficult things to keep track of in our family is which set of alter egos from which literary or cinematic source the girls have foisted upon us at any given moment. In the course of any given day, our senior editor shifts, without his knowing, from Diego (Dora) to the prince (pick your fairy tale) to Pa (the Little House series of Laura Ingalls Wilder) to the Big Bad Wolf and so on. It's hard to keep track. The one common thread of all our shifting identities, however, is Eli's sweet willingness to give Julia the limelight and to embrace her own role as faithful sidekick. When Julia is Cindrella, Eli is Gus (the mouse); when Julia is Aladdin, Eli is Abbu; when Julia is Dora, Eli is Boots (another monkey), and on and on. The only exception is when we assume identities from the Little House books, when Julia is Mary and Eli is the protagonist, Laura. This strange reversal is probably due to Julia's inability to conceive how the oldest daughter in a story could ever not be the heroine. Today Eli extended her gracious eagerness to play the sidekick even to our family study of the Book of Mormon. After hearing of the conversion of Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah, Eli cried, "Julia's Alma!" then added, "I'm Himni!"