Simply A Night Owl

I have been able to track down some of my rebelliousness back to my earliest years; those times when I was a child and can remember being the life of some of the parties that my parents hosted at the house – much to their aversion. At least I thought I was the life of the party anyway and there was a reason for me thinking that way. My dad was the absolute king of “one-liner” philosophy. If there was anything that we did that he didn’t like, he had a one liner for it. A couple of his favorites for his children were “children should be seen and not heard” and “actions speak louder than words.”

I think that one of the reasons that I became such a party favor was that I have always had the innate ability to take something that was said and twist it around in order to be able to use it to my advantage; an ability that has not lessened over the years. While my dad was the king of one-liners, I was the king of one-timers; that being something that I would only get to use in my dad’s presence once. In this case, what I did was first combine the two jewels of wisdom and remove any reference to communication since it wasn’t allowed anyway. I was able to come up with “actions from children should be seen.”

Once I came up with the translation that worked for me, I could then add the communicative references back into the mixing bowl; beat it rapidly for four or five minutes and come up with a finished product that sounds like: “Actions from children should be seen because they say a whole lot more than the words you’re not supposed to use anyway.”

I love my parents dearly and I will forever be thankful for the amount of patience that was granted them because the amount that it must have required to raise a child like me can only come from one source; God. I can only hope that I am blessed with as much. My greatest fear is that my son will be either like I was or God forbid, worse. I freely admit that if anyone is deserving of the parent’s curse, it’s me. Let me explain why by telling you a little bit about what my parents went through in the process of raising me. Remember that these are only a few examples and don’t even come close to the totality of what it was to have had me in the household as an inquisitive child with an overactive imagination.

When I was a baby, I managed to figure out how to climb up and over the top of my crib rails; I just didn’t know how to get down properly. Of course, I took the easy route and simply did a header onto the wood floor which required a trip to the emergency room and several stitches in my chin. Then, not to be outdone by myself, one week later I did the same thing again and repeated the entire process to include the emergency room visit and more stitches because I broke open last week’s wound. I also busted the same spot open on my chin during recess one day when I was in the first grade. I haven’t done it since then so there is hope.

Imagine you’re a parent out on a nice Sunday afternoon spending time with the family shopping for plants, shrubs and trees. You hear a loud crash followed by a thud and a grunt. The very first thing that you do is to look around for your son because deep down inside, you just know that he is somehow involved. That was my parents and I was the only kid that I’ve heard of who ever tried this. I decided to go exploring on my own around the nursery and I found my way to the back side of the greenhouses where the big bags of peat moss and manure were stacked up right next to the greenhouse and up to near the roof – and I was like…SCORE!!! I climbed up to the top of the stacks and stood there looking at the roof of this greenhouse for several minutes before it came to me that it would be really cool to walk across to the other side and say hi to my dad. I don’t want to keep you in suspense any longer. Yes, I started walking across. I actually made it across five panes of glass before falling through and landing in the rose bushes. It gets better though. Instead of simply getting up and walking out of the door like a normal person, I went out the same way I came in. That’s right, up in the inside wall and out of the hole in the roof. (I only kicked out one more pane)

My favorite person in the entire world is my Aunt Ginger. She always has been and still is, even today. I used to love to go visit with her at her house in Oakland, California. I absolutely loved her house because it was one of the coolest houses ever for a hyperactive kid to go exploring in. One of my favorite things to do at her house was go out on the deck and hang off of the rails. It didn’t matter to me that they were about fifteen to twenty feet off the ground and that I would have to scream bloody murder to get Aunt Ginger outside to rescue me because I didn’t have enough strength to get back up on the deck. One day, I even found my way onto the roof and decided it was a good idea to go next door and visit the neighbors.

Wow! Actions really DO speak louder than words, don’t they?