a hero, a scoundrel and a victim...

I've been reading the novel "Chronicler of the Winds" by Henning Mankell lately (great book) and last night there was a passage that hit me. In it he is referring to a group of street kids in Africa, but what hit me was how perfectly it described my kids and how I sometimes feel when watching them:

"Gradually he came to know them all, one by one, and he discovered that they were grown up even though they were kids, that they were old men even though they had scarcely reached puberty. Their stories stretched over infinite spaces of experiences, and each was a hero, a scoundrel and a victim in his own drama."

And later another passage had the same effect:

"At that moment he was a ten-year-old boy. The next moment he could once again be a very old man. He switched back and forth all the time. I never knew which one I would find before me."