My Brother Jonathan

At the end of June, I went on a short vacation with some friends and their sixth-and-a-half year old son. We got stuck in traffic driving out to Pennsylvania, so to keep Owen calm, I started telling stories. I started with my fishing stories, which led to my camping stories, which led to me being plumb out of stories and Owen still begging for more. Finally, he told me I should just repeat some of the stories I had just told, and so I chose his favorite, the night my Dad scared us by pretending to be a bear.
The story is good because my youngest brother, Jonathan, was so scared that he jumped off the ground while cocooned in his sleeping bag. Jim and I still aren't sure how he could jump that high from a horizontal position. Owen loved that image of Jonathan shooting up into the air, his arms and legs wrapped in his sleeping bag, and then crashing down on top of Jim and I in our sleeping bags.
Later in the week, I was having a very serious discussion with Owen's parents about adoption and race, and I mentioned Jonathan, who was adopted from Korea. Owen had been eating and then playing near the table, and when he heard me mention Jonathan, he came over to whisper in my ear, "Did you tell them about Jonathan and the sleeping bag?" His eyes were big and expectant and he giggled in anticipation of his parents hearing the story. My brother, the sleeping-bag-jumping superhero.