Week 15: The best dude #107days

We’re coming to the end of #107days second time around. Last night we had the premiere of The Tale of Laughing Boy, a 15 minute film about LB that we’ll share here on Day 107 tomorrow. Our penultimate post is from Tom, LB’s younger brother, sharing his thoughts and reflections. The photo is a still from the film, pencil out 15mins of your weekend now to enjoy it. For now, over to Tom:

I’ve always wanted to write a guest post, it has always striked me as something I should do. It’s the week of the film and having taken part in the film, my mum thought it would be fitting to do a post on that.

From the minute I heard about the film I was already 100% on board, obviously because I wanted to tell the great stories I have collected from 13 years of living with him and also maybe because I love films… but mainly the first reason. I was surprisingly comfortable in front of the GIANT CAMERA!!!! I think it’s just that if you know the stories from the countless amounts of times you’ve told them and you are talking about something you really care about then your not going to be nervous because you are so sure of everything you will say before you say it.

In some ways it’s fun because you aren’t just telling a story, you are reliving it in your mind, and you feel the same emotions you did at the time. Which, when discussing Connor, is pretty much constantly laughter and happiness.

I always remember Connor’s bus mat… to the average eye it was a map of a town with some roads on it, but to Connor it was Sandford, a huge city with a fully operational bus system that never failed. It had everything a city needs, shops, houses, animals, pedestrians and even a playmobil harbour. Each with it’s own set of strict rules on how it operates and how it can be ‘played with’. Having shared a room with Connor for 10 years or so and listening to the intricate thought process that went in to controlling a town of this magnitude, I can honestly say their is no city better than Sandford and I’m pretty sure I would live there if it was real.

That wasn’t Connor’s favourite city though, London was by far his favourite place on Earth. He loved it, I think it was the transport system to be honest, the idea of a city with a bus going pretty much everywhere was his dream place. One birthday of his we went to the Tower of London, his love of history and London combined, what could go wrong. Well, apart from the fact we never actually got in, huge amounts of traffic meant that after 6 or so hours on buses, when we finally arrived at the Tower of London it was closed. All us kids were so annoyed “all that travel for nothing!”

It was Connor my parents were worried about though, how would he react to the fact we weren’t actually going to the Tower. He did not care one bit, he spent the whole day in London on buses, a perfect day for him. That’s one of the amazing things about Connor, he is so easy to be pleased and enjoys such small things, and it really is amazing.

I read a lot of the stories about how people who never met Connor feel like they know him and that they love him through the tales on the blog, and this really amazes me. To me the idea of someone you don’t know changing your life tends to be a celebratory, writer or film maker. I love to think of how Connor would react if you told him hundreds of thousands of people were reading stories about him and laughing.

I picture him smiling with glee then turning away from his laptop and saying:

“Did they like it, Tom?”

“yeah, they loved it”

“Why?”

At the time this question would annoy me so much…

“Idk Connor!!! the stories are funny”

He would always ask ‘why’ to everything and my 12 year old brain ran out of reasons pretty quickly. But now I know what I would say:

“Did they like it, Tom?”

“yeah, they loved it”

“Why?”

“Because you are the best dude in the world!”