From playmate to inmate…how I got here - Part 2

Naughty by nature.

By the time I was four years old I had lost my two front teeth.  That’s not natural.  They didn’t come out on their own…like they’re supposed to.  They had a little help – ME!

The wind was blowing and the snow was flying and building up outside.  It was the first snow of the winter and first one I could recall as a child.  I was thrilled and wanted to see it first hand, face-to-face, all nat-u-ral, not through some window.

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As I made my way to the kitchen side door to peak out, the last words I heard my mother say were, 

“DO NOT open that door.”

I didn’t listen.

About that time, just as I peeped my little head out, a gust of wind whipped around the side of the house and caught the door, like the wind catching a ships sail.  As the door swung open with a SWOOSH, I forgot to let go of the handle and was instantly catapulted through the air, across the side porch, and mouth first into the cold, hard steel bumper of my parents car. 

The bumper won.

My teeth lost.

I was now front toothless.

I now bore the first mark of my rebellion.

There would be many more to come.

My grandmother used to say that one of the greatest wonders of God is that a husband and wife could have nine children (she did) and none of them turn out the same.  One is self-disciplined, while the other is free-spirited.  One can sing like a bird and the other can’t carry a tune if it had a handle.  One that’s compliant and another that is straight “off the chain” rebellious.  Such is the case of me and my only sister.  We share the same mother and father – good ones at that – were raised in the same house, in the same manner with virtually the same rules…and we turned out completely different.   Why she chose to honor and respect my parents –

Rules

Accountability

Discipline

Structure

- and I did not, is a mystery…or is it?

As a child, I loved to isolate.  I can remember playing in the woods behind our house or in my tree-house (Thanks Dad!) for hours by myself.  Though I was a good playmate to the other kids in “the hood”, I loved getting off by myself to make-believe and pretend – creating my own thrill-centered adventures, my own secret little world of excitement.

I don’t k now where it came from but I loved the secrecy of hiding things; the mere exhilaration of being sneaky.  Especially if it were something that I wasn’t supposed to have or do (i.e. “dirty books” or tobacco).  Oh how I embraced that challenge!  

It all became a game to me.

An innocent game at first.

But little did I know how very destructive it would become.

I was developing a harmful system and pattern.  A game system that would morph and re-invent itself – rearing its ugly head over and over again in my life.

The rebellious, naughty by nature boy would grow up…and soon discover pleasure to boot.

…from the inside…ray-ray