Rene, Please!

"just give me your candy and no one gets hurt"

I was one heckuva handful, an unholy mess of a child.
If there was an itch I'd scratch it. A rule, I'd break it.
A 50 foot HAM radio antenna, I'd climb it...
And greet my mother with a hearty hellooo through the outside of her bedroom window.

"Hi, Rene...Oh good God,Rene, Please!!!!!...stay right there...don't move...Mommy is coming right out!"

My mother went from 30 to 60 in 3.5 seconds...flat. Years that is.
And I would do my best in the next few years to keep my foot on the gas.

Like getting my stomach pumped three times in the span of a year:
40 yummy orange flavored St. Joseph Aspirin
6-12 bug spray sprayed into my mouth like Binaca
Airplane glue...I don't remember this.

Fortunately we lived right next door to a doctor who practiced out of his home. Mom would just whisk me right over whenever I decided to "pull a death defying stunt", as my father put it. I remember the doctor, a giant of Italian descent, screaming at me

"Why you do this, Rene???!!! you, you, you like-a da crazy?"

Yeah, me like-a da crazy.

I didn't think going to a Dr's office on a bi-monthly basis for a stomach pumping was anything out of the ordinary. For crying out loud, he lived next door, and he had so much cool shit in his office to explore that it made me completely forget about why I was there in the first place. And what better way to top off a good old fashioned stomach pumping than to have a lengthy discussion about whether the skeleton in his office was in fact a real live dead person.

Agghh...My parents have first dibs on those barca-loungers in heaven...just sayin'

Rene, Please! you are going to kill me!, was my mother's constant lament. So much so that you would have thought it was my middle name from the time I was able to walk to about the time I was twelve.

Rene, Please don't:

Try to get in the hammock by standing on your trike.
Sit in the dryer.
Use the clothesline as a slingshot (this is fookin awesome)
Spin your toddler sister in the swivel chair and then make her walk.
Put your sister in the window wells and then run off and play without her.
Blow the pilot light out on the stove.
Tell Sr. Anne she could get a boyfriend if she dressed fancier.
Tell Sr. Anne the "Halloweener" joke
Tell inappropriate jokes and anecdotes to clergy people in general ( Somehow I felt that they were my target audience and would appreciate hearing the jokes Patrick T told me he got out of his Dad's magazines..they always KILLED at school!)
Throw your peas and carrots down the heating grate.
Bend the little triangular window in the car past the point of no return.
Put your Barbies in that little drawer under the stove aka the broiler.
Stick Barbie shoes up your nose.
Convince your sister to stick Barbie shoes up her nose
Watch Emergency, Saturday night and then try to tell your father and I that you can't go to church on Sunday morning because you think you are on a bad LSD trip based on the symptoms you recognize from watching the show last night.
Laugh when someone from MARS (Military Amateur Radio Service) calls for your father and then say "Yeah, right buddy, he's on the moon!" Your father doesn't like that.
Bring up loose gossip when being introduced to a grown-up.. ie "Rene this is Mrs Jones...Call me Fran, Rene..Mommy, is this Fran, like Fat Ass, Fran?"

I am a grown adult now, but I find I am still given to a little childish impulsivity every now and again...and when that urge strikes I now get the...

Mommy, Please!

Peace ~ Rene

Dedicated to my family, thanks for putting up with my crap all of these years, you've all been really cool about letting me hang out with you...but of course, you really had no choice :)