Putting others first
Published 12:00 pm Sunday, March 8, 2009
Logan Tufte is, indeed, a teenager, but you’d have to check his ID to be sure.
Not because of how he looks, though. The Albert Lea sophomore looks young, albeit not pre-teen young, but his eighth-grade brother Tate is taller than he. But it’s not Logan’s physical appearance that makes one question his age. It’s his advanced maturity level that doesn’t match the braces in his mouth or the growth spurt that’s likely to hit any day now. You see, Tufte is a teen who seems to think of others before him. It’s evidenced in many ways.
His mother, Kaye, described her third son as a caretaker. Tufte’s girlfriend of nearly 16 months, Maranda Glassel, called him a “hopeless romantic.” The blog he authors lacks the typical teenager, self-absorbed web address, such as www.lessonsfromlogan.com or www.heylookatmeiamlogan!!!!!.com. Instead, he defers to his family name. The blog address is www.tuftememories.blogspot.com.
There are at least two pictures of Tufte’s family members on his blog and, get this, zero “turn-the-camera-around-and-snap-a-picture-of-myself” mugs that have become the millennial generation’s version of the portrait. His blog entries are worth reading; the two most recent are about a luminescent glass bowl he took a picture of and about an iron link fence. Both are strong metaphors for something bigger. Tufte opines on some big issues, some of which are fairly taboo. Again, try to keep in mind this is but a 16 year old when reading these oft-mature thoughts.
“He’s very understanding,” Glassel said. “I can tell him anything and he’ll never judge me.”
Not surprisingly, Tufte comes from a stable and supportive family. His father, Steve, is chief financial officer at LouRich, while mother Kaye is a massage therapist at Massage Connections. There are four brothers: Tristan, 21, who works for Larson Manufacturing, Louis, 19, a freshman political science major at Augsburg, plus Logan, 16, and Tate, 14. Tristan and Logan are the quiet ones, Louis and Tate the more social beings.
Louis’s theory on the “every-other-brother-is-outgoing/quiet” doesn’t surprise him, stating that it’s just each one of them trying to be their own person, trying to “identify away from your brother” and not trying to be a carbon copy of the sibling just ahead of them.
“Everyone has their own thing they do,” Louis said. “We spend enough time apart so that when we get together we’re not overloaded. It’s a nice balance between family and individual stuff.”
Logan said there was always something to do when all four were living under the same roof. He said they naturally paired up, ages playing the biggest factor, Tristan and Louis hanging out and Logan and Tate playing together. But that’s not always the case.
“Louis and I like to go four wheeling,” Logan said, “while Tate and Tristan are cool with staying home, playing video games or playing cards.
“In different ways every brother has a connection to another brother,” Logan said.
While the Tufte family likes to think of itself as normal, the facts state they’re unusual. For starters, Steve and Kaye have been married more than a quarter century, while more than 50 percent of marriages in America fail. Logan also credited his family’s successes to a lack of grudges.
“We have our problems, but everyone does,” he said. “We’ve always been able to move on. We just focus on that we’re a family and we aren’t changing that.”
Kaye said Logan is non-argumentative. When it comes to doing something around the house, there are assigned chores. One of them just does what needs to be done, but according to Kaye, Logan is the least likely to put up the typical teenage fight about. He may not get the chore done immediately, and he may even talk another sibling into doing it for him, although generally he takes care of his share of the work. But, almost never is he not going to argue about it.
Logan said he’s always respected his parents for how they raised them. They were strict, but never overly strict, and were disciplinarians when it was necessary, holding everyone to the same moral code.
Lastly, what he said has made his family work is their respect of each other’s privacy.
“Each of us has things we keep to ourselves,” he said, “and we’re not going to intrude on that.”