Things to Love on the Rollercoaster Ride - #1

TEN-YEAR-OLD BROTHERS

Mine left for camp on Monday. Mom and I filled his suitcase with letters (folded into the shapes of airplanes, cootie-catchers, etc) the night before to help ward off the homesickness, despite the fact that his fifteen-year-old brother will be along as his camp counselor. What can I say? He's a sensitive little "boy genius"--as one of his t-shirts claims--who looks every bit like he's been kidnapped from a Norman Rockwell painting.

Having both of them gone for a week reminds me of just how awesome little brothers really are, particularly at age ten. Several (among countless other) reasons are as follows:

1. Ten-year-old brothers run on a secret superfuel that only expires at chore time.

2. You can never count on what comes out of the mouth of a ten-year-old brother. For example, upon his offer to make me a necklace out of a shell he "found somewhere" and "some string," I hesitated to accept ONLY because "it might not coordinate with many of my outfits." To this he replied "Oh Shells match EVERYTHING! ...And also purple." (By which he meant NOT that shells also match purple, but that purple also matches everything. He bases this fashion certainty on the objective fact that purple is his favorite color.) Lesson learned.

3. Ten-year-old brothers construct very high-tech cardboard box forts, complete with "refrigerators" (consisting of a vertically turned mini cooler) which was handy when he invited me to have lunch with him inside of his fort yesterday. Of course I accepted, and he was the perfect host, serving cold leftover mac'n'cheese, apple slices with peanut butter, peanut butter crackers (he got a little extravagant with the peanut butter), and iced tea from a thermos. He did forget the forks, but climbed over my lap and out of the fort just to run downstairs and get them, so all was well. After lunch we brainstormed for an official fort title, came up with a secret password (which of course can never be revealed), and he gave me the grand tour of all the peep-holes and secret compartments, one of which held a rubber dagger sheathed in a shoelace-wrapped dish towel. This, he informed me, was kept handy "in case we need to defend ourselves from enemies or foes" like our fifteen-year-old brother, who is far too mature and cool to appreciate the intricate beauty of a cardboard box fort.

Ten-year-old brothers = awesome.