My little brother Logan Long is, perhaps, the most important person in my life. He turned 8 this summer, and what can I say? I just love the kid. Recently my mom got remarried to a Japanese man. He wants to adopt Logan, thus making him Logan Takagi. Logan objects because, “Takagi is harder to spell than Long.” The squirt’s just full of clever comments.

A few days before his seventh birthday, he left a glass of chocolate milk in his bedroom. After his birthday, stepdad Marty discovered it. He scolded Logan saying, “You’re seven now, you know better.” Logan slyly replied, “Well Marty, I was six when I left it there.”

I like to take credit for teaching him everything he knows and providing him with something of a sense of humor. There are things that all kids need to know. He learned from an early age what music was good, what cartoons were awesome and all the folklore regarding Jedi. I also think it’s good for a kid to have a BS detector, so I mess with him a bit.

On one such occasion we were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. One round, he went with Rock. I however, decided to go with the elusive Tornado (elusive because I just made it up on the spot). I told Logan that “Tornado blew away Rock.” Realizing the awesome power that is Tornado, he grinned and challenged me to another round. This time he went with Tornado and I went with Paper. As he was about to gleefully claim victory I informed him that, “Paper covers Tornado.” He sighed and accepted his defeat, then ran off to tell the other kids about Tornado’s weakness against Paper.

My latest ruse is to tell him that I have a GameCube. He gets all excited but is then convinced that I’m lying. I tell him he’s right, I don’t have a ‘Cube. To him, this is an obvious indication that I do have a GameCube and insists on playing it until he again convinces himself that I’m lying. We go back and forth like this for hours on end at times.

He came to visit with the family come Hobo Day, which was great. You may have seen him — he was the kid with the light-saber trying to convince another kid that Paper could kick Tornado’s ass any day.