The Kid My Folks Should Have Drowned!

                Here's a funny story about some of the rotten things a kid can do, including stealing horses...      

                The reason I'd say such a thing is because, I know, honestly, as a parent, (and you do too, go on ... admit it! )  there are TIMES you really want to KILL your kids!

Doesn't everybody have a nerd photo like this?

               My parents were not saints.  I KNOW they had these thoughts, about ME!  Yeah, give I them a lot of credit, they NEVER said it, but the LOOKS they gave me sometimes.  YOU know those LOOKS, don't all of you?  They gave me plenty of those LOOKS.  And Mom cried a lot.

               I gave them a plethora of reasons, too, as a teenager.  However, long before I ever got to that "I-feel-like-wringing-your-nasty-unwashed-little-mouthy-neck" teenage stage, I was a terror at home.  And I was pretty young to be a terror.  I terrorized with words and wild critters ....

              The words were any cuss words I heard Dad say when he hit his thumb with his hammer, or when he and Mom got into a bad fight. The immediate reaction was Mom's open mouth, astonishment, really.... for a few seconds, then the soap came out and I got my mouth washed out or my butt swatted really hard.. HARD.  If I didn't get a spanking EVERY day, it was not a normal day.   Even at a young age, I could cuss like a sailor.   I  know, I married one later.

Me at a couple weeks old with mom and dad

Mom and me at about 7 months or so

                    Sure, I started out as a sweet, very hairy baby.  (My mom said when they brought me in to her, I was a "curly-mopped, thick black hair-crowned" critter. I was some "other lady's kid".   She said her eyes bugged out at the sight of me!)

                    "THAT'S not MY baby!  That can't be MY baby!" 

No kidding.   She really said those words! (She is the one who told me.) 

                      I am sure she felt that way years later, too.  She probably wondered which Honey Wagon I had fallen off of!  Or wished she could have given me back!

                     Well, they made her take me home and I guess I grew on her. 

Me at about a year. Don't you hate me for having naturally curly hair?

                    I only weighed about 5 lbs.  That is because she smoked like a chimney, and drank Coca-Cola which, in those days, contained small amounts of cocaine, believe it or not! 
  

                    She told me that she put me in a shoe box full of cotton and put me on the oven door with the heat on to keep me warm.  Poor Mom.

                   She made me a gingerbread baby. The heat must have cooked my brain.  (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

                   She also never learned you can't leave a baby on its back ALL the time, so my head is nice and flat there.  Also, in panicked response to a ringing doorbell one day, she left me on the kitchen counter while giving me a bath.  I fell off on my head.   Twice.  (This kind of episode happened again a week later.)

                            That explains a lot, doesn't it?

                     When Dad left for overseas again before the end of  WW ll, she was up in Gull Lake, Michigan, near Battle Creek, on some base near there.  His pay chit didn't arrive for 2 months, their furniture was lost and she ended up in an empty apartment on base with only a dresser,  a table and chair.  She got those out of a dumpster.  

                      She put me in the dresser drawers as my "crib", since she also did not have a baby bed.  Mom said she was so embarrassed and also afraid of those "damn Yankees"  (she was an Alabama girl, with no friends up North) and worried what they'd think of her, so she didn't ask for help.

                      She said that times were really desperate.  Fishing in the lake and cooking the fish for me to eat, plus sharing her Coke and mashed peanuts was mostly my diet, and milk when she could afford it.  Yeah, that probably accounts for my citrus and fish allergies I had growing up.  I was under a year, but Mom didn't know any better.  She didn't have a phone and her mom was over a thousand miles away. 

                        I guess in her defense, she did the best she could.

                      Well, one day some other officer's wives had heard she was there, and came knocking to visit her.  In a panic again, she put the armful of laundry she had been folding, on top of me in the dresser and shut the drawer!   She ran to answer the door, and tried to get rid of those nosy ladies.  They weren't having it and pushed themselves in the door, chattering all the time, looking for "the new baby."

                    I wasn't having being buried under towels in a dresser drawer in the dark!!   I let out a series of ear-splitting shrieks like a good little banshee from the depths of the dresser.  They ran all over until they found me!  They must have thought she was totally bonkers. 

                     Instead of judging her, they helped her.  Got a crib, furniture, and a bed for her, until they could locate her furniture for her, and figure out why Dad's pay chit for her was lost. They also got us cash, groceries and some clothes for me.  Up til then I was wearing socks with arm holes cut in them.  Like I said, Mom was desperate.

                   So, the Yankees saved the day.  And me.  I like Yankees.  My Dad was one.  Sometimes just to annoy her, I'd say she was a Southern Belle - a "real ding dong."  See what I mean?  They should have killed me for saying stuff like that.

Me at about three in VA. I was a terror even then.

                        I grew up without incident for a couple more years; except when I was a year old I had Roseola Infantum, like measles, only worse.   She rocked a screaming, itching, feverish me for two solid weeks, day and night.   She said I almost died except for the team of doctors that slaved over me and revived me several times.  Maybe dramatic, but scary for her.  She didn't "know from nothin"  in those days. 

Can't you just see the attitude even then?

                          My very first terror attack on Mom was to bring a baby rattler to her, right into the house. 

                          I was three or four and it scared the "beejeebers" out of my half sister Carol and Mom.  

                          They ran screaming into the living room and then Mom realized I was alone with a snake in my hand!

Me and sister Carol. She passed last year.

                   She grabbed the broom and briskly whacked both of us -me and the snake!   Then she proceeded to make a pancake out of the snake while I stood there and screamed my head off. 

                  She'd vaporized my cool snake PET!  I pouted for days.

                   The next incident was another snake, and I was five then.  I put it in my closet.  

                  It was a big King snake, and when Mom went in to get my laundry, it was in the basket.  She about blew a lung screeching till she got that broom again and whacked my PET to death. 

  

                  After the snake followed a succession over the years of baby guinea pigs, many, many baby birds, turtles, mice, and lizards.  Each was hidden in the same FATAL place - my closet.  Mom learned fast.  She used to go in there carrying a broom and was ready for action.  They all died horrible deaths at Mom's hands, except Dad "rescued" some baby birds from her.  

               He threw them over the fence into the VA Hospital grounds so I wouldn't bring them back.   The tractor lawnmower ran over them.   Oh, well, he didn't know I KNEW.  Parents think they can fool their kids, but I KNEW.

     I graduated from those mundane critters to stealing horses. 
  

                 I stole one full grown not tame horse when I was about five.  Got right up on that bugger from climbing the fence where it was tied and pulled the reins loose, and took right off.   The astonished owner jumped on another other horse tied there, and a wild chase ensued. 

                   The horse, (named Lily) and I, squealing happily, bouncing along in the saddle,  made it back to the corral at a dead run, all lathered up.   Lily got oats and a rub down.

                   I got a spanking.  It's a wonder I never fell off and killed myself.  But I loved horses.  So stealing them came naturally after that.

If it had four legs and looked like a horse, I was on it.

             

                    When I was about 8, a rent-a -horse with a saddle still on it,  happened to be running through our neighborhood.  It had tossed it's rider, escaped, and stopped to eat our nice lawn.  In MY mind, that was the opportunity of a lifetime. 

                    You see, every kid wants HIS or HER own horse.  There it was, munching on our lawn, resting from it's getaway.  I stealthily caught MY horse by its hanging bridle. I ensconced it in a vacant garage up by the nurses' quarters at the VA hospital near where we lived.  Nobody saw me.  

       Not any adult that is.  Only my "gang" knew what I was up to.

                   My cronies and I ripped up tons of grass for the horse by hand,  until our fingers were stained green.  We swiped carrots, apples and all the "horsey" foods we would never touch ourselves to eat.    That should have been a giveaway to our parents, but they were clueless and missed the signs.  We carried the food to our hideout and even found a bucket to put water in for our captive "community" horse.   We dubbed "it" Horsey.  (We couldn't tell what the sex was at our ages.)

Our horse then lived in the dark garage for a WEEK!!

                      None of us had the guts to try to ride it, because it was OUR horse, and so amazingly precious.  Besides, some parent would surely see us.  So we kept OUR HORSEY hidden!   It was the pinnacle of our days to see, feed and pet this wonderful critter.

                    Yeah, the owners came looking for it, and of course, they asked us kids about the horse.  WE HAD NOT SEEN ANY HORSE.  

                    That was OUR story and we stuck to it.  They left and didn't return.  

                   We had a horse now, OUR horse!   Well, the poor horse was still saddled, still bridled and the garage was filling up with you know what.  The flies were thick on the outside like a blanket.  You could smell the sh_t a mile away. 

                                         Still no parents figured things out.

                   Looking back, as a horse lover, and former horse owner as an adult, I feel sorry for that nag. It must have been miserable.  But it ate every thing we kids brought and it pooped it all out, too.  Finally, one day, a passing student nurse noticed the "fly blanket" and thought something had died in there.  She made a panicked call.  It happened to be to MY DAD.

Me with cousin Bill about the age I stole the horse. He had nothing to do with it all.

                      Dear old Dad happened to be the Chief Engineer of the VA Hospital where we lived on the staff post.  He was the MAN. If something went wrong, he was the one to call. 


                     So he went over there with the fire engine and the post police and found our horse. 


                       Nothing dead, but it sure smelled worse than death.  "Horsey" was returned to the owners and we never saw it again.

                        I never admitted to stealing the horse.

                        I wasn't the oldest kid on the block and was certainly not the biggest villain, so I never actually got caught.  We kids, my gang, if you will, mourned the loss of OUR horse.  Nobody talked about it and we all got away with it.  (At least I think we got away with it.)   We denied any involvement, but I KNOW my Dad suspected ME.    


                      You never know when some aging, angry horse owner, now rolling weakly along in his wheel chair is going to show up on my doorstep and simply pound me into oblivion.

                      I guess you would think that cured me.  It didn't. 

                     The next thing I did was "adopt" an old work mule down the road from where we lived. I'd brush the dirt out of the stinking mule's coat, feed it treats, and baby its tired hooves.  Then I'd get help mounting from an old stump, riding bareback with just a rope around it's jaw.  That was heaven to a 12 yr-old horse-loving girl.  It didn't matter to me if the ears were too long and the back was swayed.


                      Since I kept disappearing a lot, I told my Dad I was "exercising" a neighbor's "Thoroughbred" horse for them.  One day he was driving his station wagon down that road and passed right by me.   
I saw his brake lights go on and I knew the "gig was up."  I waited for censure.

                    At dinner that night, all he said was, "That was some THOROUGHBRED!"  Then he smirked and ate another roll.  That was MY dad.

It didn't matter if the horse was dead as a doornail - I'd still ride it.

                   But he let me go on riding that dirty old mule for years.  I rode that thing all over the Blue Ridge Mountains, even came upon some Moonshiners and could have been shot.  I didn't even have a saddle or bridle.


                   It's amazing I didn't fall off and crack my thick skull, or get kidnapped or worse.  Anything for a horse or something close to one.

                   The last thing I ever did to terrorize my mom or dad was when I was in Advanced Biology in High School.   I had this huge dead frog I was supposed to boil down to bones and assemble as a frog skeleton.  I planned how to do it.

                    I waited until my folks were gone, got a big pot and stuck MR. FROG in it and put it on to boil.  I was going to de-meat his dead bones and then dry and glue them back together.  A+  was going to be MY grade.

                   Well, as Fate would have it,  Mom had forgotten her purse and they came home just as the pot was doing a really hard boil.  Let me tell you the sh_t hit the fan when they walked in the door!

                  The odor was nothing short of intense.   Mom walked in with her mouth going as usual,  and got a throat full of formaldehyde and frog.  It happened to be her best NEW pot, too.  See, I'd burn the old one trying to make a cheese sauce by myself and had set the kitchen on fire. 

                   Well, I got the A+.  But it wasn't from HER!

Mom, me and nieces.  See, I could even screw up a good photo! You can see what she had to put up with.

So, that was the LAST straw.  

             NO more cooking in the house, for me, no more pets, wild or otherwise, and no more bringing Biology projects home.  I was banished to the basement with an old pot of Dad's and completed the project, Mr. Frog, in absolute solitude, with fans going and all the windows open the rest of the day.   

              To this day,  I still smile at the memory of the look on her face when she saw those frog legs sticking out of her BEST pot ...

Like I said, hasn't every parent wished

they'd drowned their kid at birth, even once in a while?

Me at the age when I stole my first horse. Still proud of it. I was definitely "Intrepid."