Slugging Is How They Show They Love Each Other

I'm going to make a prediction at the end of this blog.

Tonight I was sitting in my hotel room looking at pictures of my little family on our vacation to Disneyland from earlier this year.  It was melancholy sweet to see their beautiful faces.  I'm in Brazil, which is great, but I'm gone for a month, which is not.  One short video clip in particular grabbed my attention.

Mackay and David were riding a couple of horses on a Merry-Go-Round.  David was hanging on intently and looking around to see the cacophony of colors, hear the melodious carnival music and then he looked up several times to observe the mechanical connection of the drive shaft lifting and lowering his fish a foot and half at a time.

Mackay, meanwhile, had ridden in this rodeo before.  He was generally more interested in the people outside the ride than the events going on inside it.   When he did look inside it was to give David pointers.

These two have been historical enemies since birth, like jews and arabs type enemies.  Until David was big enough to physically defend himself or flee we had to put a 'no touch' order on Mackay because he pounded on his brother so frequently.  It's not that he doesn't love him, because he really does.  He just doesn't know how to show that love other than though the use of excessive force.

Here's another example.  We were at Jedi training and afterward I asked the boys to pose for a picture in front of the Star Wars sign.  They had just learned to use the force and so use it they did.  Brigham pulled a sweet pose holding out a hand to knock over droids across the street.  Mackay pulled something very similar and in the first picture he shot the force at me with his right hand and with his left placed it on David's head and 'forced' him down to the ground, captured in a short series of pictures.  Take that Luke Skywalker.

Nothing makes Mackay's mother madder than the eternal fight that she has with keeping CMB in check around his brother.

So here's my prediction:

They are going to be amazing friends forever.

In that Merry-Go-Round clip I saw something at the very end that only lasted a second or two but reminded me of something I have seen a thousand times in person--Mackay was genuinely and heart feltedly concerned for his brother.  Not that he was in danger or any sort of risk, just that David's success and happiness was more important than even his own.  It's a duality of nature that CMB has unique to any other child I've met.  And for all the beatings the little kid has taken there is no one David wants to be more than Mackay and Brigham Bradbury.

That love and friendship not something that can be contrived or forced.  It must be cultivated but it is inherent in the souls of the young men.  Like the saying goes, "you can't coach that--you have to draft it."  They are brothers.  And every once in a while I see something that shows me what that means.  May they always be that for each other.

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There's a new reading achievement test that kids take these days.  I can't remember what it is called.  A child should be reading at a 37 by the end of first grade.  It's early February and Brigham just got his scores back, he got a 138.  I frequently said it when he was born, kind of as a joke, but man this kid is a genius.