So essentially, I'm a smartass.  (Shocker, right?)  A smartass and a storyteller.  I have probably been these things since I learned to talk, spinning some facetious yarn about how binkies are actually the detached udders of cows.  I also have three brothers.   Therefore, as with many children in large families, I grew up feeding those brothers lines of crap and seeing how much they’d buy.   What?  It’s fun!  A healthy family activity.   

However, call it fate or karma or what have you, I am now saddled with a child who puts an awful lot of emphasis on personal empirical knowledge.  For example, the lovely Motherbumper one time told a story about her child playing with a ratchet gun (without a bit) and Motherbumper told said child that if she unscrewed her belly button her butt would fall off.

This is exactly the type of thing I would have reveled in telling my brothers!

But, for a long time, I couldn't (and maybe still can't) say anything like that to Chance... because he would try to unscrew his belly button.  Just to see if his butt would fall off.  See, he seems to have the unfortunate combination of intense curiosity and a certain lack of self-preservation.  When he was younger I often caught him trying to touch the thing that I just told him was hot.  If I explained the cause and effect of hitting the wrong end of his spoon, next thing I knew he'd be flinging food in the air.  He had to test everything.  By the time he was ready for warnings about electric outlets I knew to intentionally leave out any mention of forks.

I couldn’t figure out where this... I don't even know what to call it... scientific spirit? foolhardiness? ...came from.  Regardless of the fact that my brothers and I told each other great big whoppers we knew better than to try them out.  I mean, what if one of those stories were actually true?  When my older brother would stick his tongue on a battery and pretend to be electrocuted... did I ever test that?  HELL no!  Did my youngest brother really think that if he didn't wear his underwear his penis would fall off and he'd become a girl?  I don't know, but I do know he started wearing underwear again. 

Anyway, you can see my dilemma... with Chance's million questions (and trust me, he has a LOT of questions) sometimes a smartass story is just burning to get out.  But I can't!  Given his nature I just need to suppress my facetious instincts until (hopefully) he grows out of testing everything.  Which I hope is soon.  I still can't figure out where this came from; I mean, in my family, I admit, we're all a little detrimentally creative at times but we're still healthily self-protective about bodily harm.

So one day I'm discussing (complaining about) this aspect of Chance with my mom and she says, "Yeah, I was like that.  I'd scratch myself because I thought blood was interesting."

*blink blink blink*

Thanks Mom!     

                     - the weirdgirl