Aidan got 23 stitches in the face that day, and that was just one of the three times Mack has put his little brother in the ER with broken bones or cuts.

You’d think Mack would carry around some feelings of guilt about repeatedly brutalizing his younger sibling. But…no.

Today, Mack brought home a project he created in the computer lab. It listed different goods and services, and had descriptive sentences about each one. Under goods, he listed ice cream (“I love ice cream! My favorite flavor is cookie dough.”) and football (“I am a great QB. I want to be a football player when I grow up.”) among others.

Under services, he listed stores (“I like to get footballs and jerseys and toys at stores.”) and the hospital. For the hospital, his descriptive sentence was, “When my brother gets hurt we go to the hospital.”

Mack turned nine this month, and was therefore already a bit on the old side for “believing.” (The average age where kids find out is eight.) But he was very tied to the Santa myth, didn’t question it much, and accepted my answers to any questions he did ask me about the jolly old elf.

In fact, Mack seemed far less skeptical than his six-year-old brother, Aidan. Last summer, I said something about Santa and Aidan scoffed and said, “There is no Santa. It’s the parents.” While my jaw dropped in shock, Mack’s head whipped around and he fixed me with a stare, “Is that true?!” Somehow I got out of that one without much comment, but I’ve always had the feeling that Mack would believe for as long as he possibly could, while Aidan probably figured it out in preschool and just humors us.

This year I had considered telling Mack the truth, but I had decided to try to reach for one more year with the magic intact. However, logic intervened. The boys were downstairs playing video games, while Byron and I were upstairs. Suddenly, we hear the basement door slam open, and all the kids come running up into our room. Aidan was holding a big, empty box. It was the box his skateboard had come in. The skateboard that Santa gave him. Crap.

I had asked Byron to hold onto the box, just until we made sure there was nothing wrong with the skateboard and it didn’t have to go back to the store. He put it under a blanket in our back storage area. Apparently, Aidan went back there to get some batteries, got curious, and found the box.

So the three of them are standing in my room, Aidan brandishing the box, and Mack yells, “If Santa is real why do we have this box?” Aidan says, “Because it is Mommy and Daddy.” Reid is just watching and listening.

I replied, “Santa must have left it. He does that sometimes.” Aidan, “Then why was it in the basement under a blanket?” “Your Dad put it down there after Christmas morning.” Aidan cocks his head, and looks at me. I can see that he is deciding whether to accept this and move on, or whether to make this a really tough morning. Suddenly Mack exclaims, “Then why is there a price tag from Dick’s on there? If Santa made it, why does it say Dick’s?” Crap.

I said, “Mack, come here. Little boys, go downstairs.” They did as I said. I pulled Mack into my arms and – I will always remember this – he looked right in my eyes and softly said, “Is it you?” It was like he knew, but he didn’t really want to know. So I told him the truth. I am still not sure it was the right thing to do. But here’s the thing. I have a three year old in the house, who should get several more years of believing. If I don’t tell Mack now (I decided) he’s going to continue to unravel the mystery out loud, and therefore ruin it for his brothers. If he knows the truth, he’ll shut his mouth and his brothers can believe without interference.

At least that’s what I have to believe – that there was a positive reason I had to do this. Because it was hard to tell him.

Mack took the news well. I suppose by the time you are nine, a part of you already knows the truth. (Although the NORAD Santa Tracker goes a long way towards convincing even third graders.) We told him how now he is in on the secret, and has a responsibility to help the younger kids believe for as long as they can. He promised not to say a word to his brothers or cousins. I hugged him and told him I was so sorry to have to tell him, but that it meant he was growing up and I was proud of him.

Even though he took it so well, I questioned my decision all day. I can’t imagine how hard it would be if you had a kid who really struggled with finding out the truth.

Although Mack is ostensibly a “gifted” child, it took him almost seven hours to approach me, as I was folding laundry, and ask, “The Easter Bunny…?” I had to say, “Yeah, buddy, that’s me and Daddy too.” Two hours later, at dinner, he pulled me aside and said, “What about the Tooth Fairy?” I just pressed my lips together and nodded my head sadly. He sighed and said, “So magic isn’t real.”

Anyway, Mack was registered for the 5k race at this school. Mack has run several 5k’s before, but he hadn’t done one in about six months. So we were both a little nervous before the race. He actually told me he had butterflies in his stomach, to which I replied, “Good.”

The race started and off they went down the street. I puttered around, preparing my camera and finding my “cheering spot” on the side of the road. I kept checking my watch, waiting for the first runners to appear back up the course. It’s so annoying, when you are at a race, how bored you get while you stand there waiting for the runners to come along. Must remember to bring doughnuts next time.

I had a time in my head when I expected to see Mack at the two-mile point, so I was surprised to see him chugging up the hill towards me about four minutes ahead of schedule. At first I couldn’t believe it was him, even with the system we have in place – Mack always wears red when he races, so I can pick him out of the crowd from a distance. I just got tired of cheering, “There he is! Go, Mack! Oh, that’s not him. Hold on, there he is. Yay, Mack! Wait, nope.” So now he has Race Red and it cuts down quite a bit on my cheering for the competition.

Mack looked to be in pretty good shape when he came by, but I figured he wouldn’t be able to keep that pace up for the final mile. So imagine my surprise when he came back towards the finish line, still more than three minutes ahead of his personal best. He was chasing down a kid in front of him who had the approximate size and dimensions of someone in his age group (eight and under). I was running along the path to the side, cheering madly, as he passed the kid and then passed a teenager right before the line, finishing in a new best time of 24:07.

I came running up as the race staff member was putting Mack’s participation medal over his head, just in time to hear the man say, with tension in his voice, “Here, move over here.”

I realized that my little thoroughbred was vomiting chocolate Pop-Tart all over the finish line. He kept going until his stomach was empty, as I tried to coerce him to move away from the finish. A school nurse and another volunteer converged on him, checking his eyes, lowering him to the ground and procuring water. Other parents were looking on with concern and asking, “Is he okay?”

Mack was fine within minutes, and very proud of his great new personal record. I was proud of him, too, but I felt badly. Because when I saw him throwing up, my very first thought was how awesome it was that he had pushed himself so hard that he made himself sick with effort. My second thought was, “Gross.” My third thought was that I needed to tell him, for the future, that if he is going to throw up after a race he needs to move away from the finish and find a bush or a trash can.

Fourth was, “Oh, I guess I should be concerned.”

Which probably makes me a bad Mommy. But my kid is a heck of a runner.

I was sorting laundry, waiting for them to finish, when I heard Mack call out, “Mommy, I cut myself. There’s blood.” I walked into the bathroom, assuming it would be something like a nick on the toe, only to find that he had somehow sliced the side of his wrist open. The cut was about an inch long and there was indeed blood – a lot of blood.

I had the reaction I generally have when one of my boys is bleeding. Was it a quick rush to action, with exceptional first aid accompanied by calming words, you ask? No, I panicked and screamed, “Byron! Byron! Help!”

Believe me, I don’t report this because I think it is a charming quirk. I hate how I panic when the boys are hurt; I worry that someday it might hamper my ability to help them when they really need it. But when I see blood on one of the boys, my brain goes all wonky.

This effect is especially pronounced when the injured son is Mack. In his eight short years, Mack has cultivated a certain mystique of invulnerability. He almost never gets sick, even so much as a sniffle. He laughs off cuts and bruises, gets dental work without anesthesia, and has been known to run (and win) two distance races on the same day, with a soccer game and a swim practice sandwiched between.

So when Mack gets hurt, it’s kind of like that part in Superman II, where Superman gives up his powers so he can be with Lois Lane. (Which, can we all just stop to agree – big mistake. She wasn’t into you for your nerdy glasses and knowledge of AP style, Clark.) Anyway, they come down from the Fortress of Solitude and go into that diner. The local bully starts up with Clark and eventually socks him in the nose. When blood actually comes out, we all freak because it is just so shocking and incongruous.

Luckily, last night Byron was just down the hall and came to the rescue. It took about 50 tissues, several pieces of gauze, medical tape, Neosporin, butterfly bandages and sports strips, but he got the bleeding stopped and the wound bandaged. We decided it didn’t even require stitches. (Again, the Mack Mystique. If it had been Aidan, the cut would have been just that little bit deeper and we would have been headed to the ER, no question.)

Once we were both recovered, I asked Mack how he cut himself. Turns out he got himself on something as he reached up to put the soap back in its dish. We couldn’t figure out what it was; it may have just been the plastic edge of my shampoo tube. I told him I was so sorry that such a weird accident happened to him and he replied, “You told me the bathroom is the most dangerous room in the house.”

Or, as my sister (who has a Masters degree in gifted education) used to put it, “He gets to be gifted for an hour a week.” Of course, said sister is now the gifted education teacher at my son’s school, and the one who teaches him for that hour every week. So I feel confident that he’s getting the maximum benefit from that 60 minutes.

Anyway, the program sent home a form today asking us to provide a little information about our expectations. It also had a few questions for the child to answer himself. It asked what topics the child would like to learn about this year, what types of activities the child likes, and so forth.

The last question is “What is one thing you think is special about yourself?”

Mack’s answer: I am a super accuracy quarterback, and I am good at booming it deep.

Aidan and Mack both love to ride the waves. Aidan, in particular, can’t get enough of the ocean. Several times I saw him wipe out massively and I was sure he’d come up crying. But every time it was a big grin and another few steps out to sea.

At dinner this evening, we talked about the waves and how they are affected by the weather. Aidan opined, “It would be cool if there was a storm tonight, and it came and then it went away. Then tomorrow we would have radical water.”

All I can think is that my southern California upbringing somehow came out through the blood.

I do wonder why Aidan needed 20 (twenty) glue sticks. There will be 25 or 26 kids in his class. What class needs more than 500 glue sticks for the year? What exactly will they be gluing? Is there some sort of black market in glue sticks, and the teachers plan to sell them off to supplement their salaries?

I’m also wondering why Mack needs, specifically, a ruler with three holes, a fabric pencil case with three holes, and paper with three holes…but no binders or folders with three rings.

Mack was very concerned with being numbed up. Last time, while numb, he chewed up the inside of his cheek, and hurt for days. So this time he asked the dentist whether he could skip the numbing agent. She told him she was dubious, but would ask me. I said it was okay by me if it was what he wanted. The dentist agreed to give it a try. But she warned him that if he moved around too much she would numb him up.

Apparently he held perfectly still. Even the dentist, a kind of taciturn person, was impressed when she told me that Mack had gotten two fillings with no numbing.

Nothing like a little pioneer dentistry.

Afterward, Mack competed in a track meet, taking 18 seconds off his previous best in the 1600 meters, and getting a personal record 7-6 in the long jump.

Whoever assigned the bib numbers for this race obviously knows Mack.

He struggled during the race and ran about 25 seconds slower than last week in the state championships (where he came in third). Both times I saw him on the course he just didn’t look like himself. He just seemed tired and as if he couldn’t pick his feet up like normal. Usually I love to watch him run. But today I actually felt like hopping the rope and pulling him off the course. He did have a pretty good finish where he was seesawing with another boy on the way in and he beat him to the line.

Later I was looking at the race photos with Mack and showing him how he just didn’t look like he was having fun except when he was battling that kid at the end. Turns out that, as that kid passed him earlier in the race, the kid said, “See ya!” as he went by.

Big mistake.

Mack came after the kid, passed eight other runners while looking for him, found him and beat him by a quarter of a second. That’s. My. Boy.