Do you believe that leopards never change their spots and have used that adage when discussing people as well? I've certainly espoused that belief many times. However, I would ask you this — are you the same person you were at twenty? At forty? At sixty?
Believe it or not, people can and do change.
This seems to be a nice room of people. I'm sure everyone here comes from a text-book perfect family with Norman Rockwell-inspired holidays. Unlike you, I come from crazy people, whose one claim to fame is that they never forget.
Gathering for a holiday event appears to be a red flag for many of my family members, who are eager to recount disastrous childhood memories or basically every humiliating event they witnessed in my life.
How bad is it, you ask?
Every year at Thanksgiving, this story hits the dinner table early to set the festive mood and remind us all that the season of celebrations are once again among us.
As a side note, please keep in mind I'm giving you, my version of facts. Sadly, they are not here to tell you theirs.
You may not believe it to look at me now, but I was an adventuresome child. My parents, like yours, had a list of things their sons and daughters were never to even consider doing. However, while threats were implied, actual punishment for specific violations was vague. It fell more along the lines of a shaking of the head and murmurs of "Lord save the child who disobeys".
At the top of that list was to never, ever, ever climb up on the garage roof. Why? Because you could step on a protruding nail and end up with lockjaw or fall off and break your neck. All involving physical harm, but I was nine and like most nine-year-olds, knew I was bullet proof.
Since physical harm appeared unrealistic to me, I deemed the threat level to be minimal. And that's how our family holidays begin.
However, I do not want you to believe this story is the end.
My older sister could barely hold herself together waiting to relate her much-overhyped version of how I stepped on her knee and dislocated it. When basically, it was a series of unfortunate events that put her in the hospital. Truly not worth telling.
While these things happened and my name was forever tarnished in the annals of family gatherings, I have changed. I am not the same person I was. I've grown into a mature, responsible woman with an abundance of common sense.
Trust me on that.
But...
If someone's willing to fly a helicopter over the yard and drop a rope ladder. I bet I can beat you to the top. | HB