My step-brother, 14-year-old Brody O’Tool, is a Padawan and hopes to become a Jedi. I am his Jedi Master. He has completed several of his tasks and only has a few remaining.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with “Star Wars” lingo, go along with me here. This daddy of a 2-year-old spent a week with a teenager for goodness sake, and we developed about 119 great inside jokes and weeklong themes that made us laugh until our seams burst. There were so many that most are now forgotten.

For instance, every mileage description was expressed with a .2. While hiking Isle Royale National Park, I had estimated a distance as 6.2 and he asked about the extra two-tenths. After my goofy explanation, all distances — even itty-bitty short ones and incredibly long ones — were expressed in decimal form.

How much longer is this boat ride to the mainland? Oh, I’m guessing about 14.2 miles.

The Star Wars aspect of Jedi and Padawan was another theme. Brody, who is a baseball MVP from Fort Dodge, Iowa, accomplished many of the tasks he is required to do before claiming the title of a Jedi.

He backpacked, oh, about 28.2 miles over four days. From Windigo to the top of Mount Desor, there was an elevation gain of more than 750 feet, which is pretty good for a flatlander.

By the way, that’s what mountain dwellers out West call us Midwesterners. You’ll have an in-shape-looking Midwesterner go to the Cascade Range for a steep hike and someone from there who looks less fit often will climb the trail faster. Why? Mainly because living in different places develops different leg muscles.

Brody passed the trapped-in-a-sleeping-bag test. Kids these days go crazy when there is no cell phone signal, so to kill the boredom he zipped up his bag and then made the mistake of asking, “Does this thing close all the way?”

Instead of answering, I just cinched up the two strings that close the head hole all the way. He rolled around, stood up, jumped all over, fell many times, feigned a beg for release and even stumbled outside before finally figuring out that if he can get an arm out of the small hole he can release the cinch. He was free. He passed the test, but he looked hilarious doing it.

Brody passed the five-days-without-a-cell-phone test. He made it, but as soon as we had a signal again on Highway 61, he was buried in his text messages and communicating with friends in Iowa.

Brody beat me at cribbage. By my count, we played 11 times. I won the first 10 times, and in two of the games I skunked him. Finally, in his final opportunity of the vacation, he won. It was on a big board with big pegs at My Sister’s Place in Grand Marais over cheeseburgers and fries. I was coming down with a cold, but I won’t that stand as an excuse. He won fair and square.

Where do you buy those big boards with big pegs anyway?

Brody learned not to kill everything he came in contact with. Isle Royale lost a lot of flaura and fauna. Good thing we didn’t run into a moose, but we did hear wolves howl. We met a fox, too, but he kept a keen eye on Brody.

This was a difficult test for the kid to pass, but by the end, Brody had become able to see beautiful things without acting on his urge to kill.

Brody passed the fire-starting test. He was used to piling dry sticks and leaves to start a big fire all at once, and he did just that the first night on the island. But backpackers usually deal with small fires, and in forests the wood can be a little damp. He learned how to find and feel dry kindling, how to lay it in the firepit, how to light a small fire, how to understand fire’s need for oxygen and how to grow the fire. By the end, he could do it correctly because, though it barely rained, dry wood made a big difference from barely moist wood. He learned that trees use bark to resist fires, so usually it burns at higher temperatures. Don’t use bark to start a fire.

And I explained that, no, you can’t just torch the propane tank. We need it for cooking.

That reminds me. He passed the test of how to cook with a tiny campstove.

He held his own and was about to lose a light-saber fight when in a last-ditch effort he chopped off my legs, passing the test. For light sabers, we used the bottom half of fishing poles.

There were many other tests Brody the Padawan passed, but here are some he still must pass:

 Catch a fish from a lake’s shore without live or preserved bait.

 Grill a tasty meal for me on a real-life manly grill. Key word: tasty.

Learn to take in-focus photographs on a regular basis.

Sing the “Mario Brothers 3” tunes by heart.

 Beat me at a game of air hockey.

 Beat me in a game of disc golf.

That last one will take him some time, especially since Fort Dodge has a shoddy and short 9-hole disc golf course built in 1979. However, there is an effort under way to build a better one. Someday, he will beat me. He is a catcher and a pitcher and as he grows he will have an arm like a cannon.

Isle Royale is a great place to go if you enjoy nature or kids or both.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.