Which Battle Will You Pick?

Why I Just Can’t “Keep the Peace...”

I was pretty young when I first learned I was a difficult child. My mother did a bang up job of laying that on me—with plenty of stories shared with others about my obstinance. For some reason “go along to get along” had not been properly wired in my psyche as an infant, and this would become a source of great consternation to all within my orbit.

“I do not want to kiss Uncle Karl.”

Friends, those eight words—uttered when I was under the age of three—became the stuff of family legend. Of course, I have no specific memory of the event as described, but I do know it occurred before I turned three because we moved to Wisconsin when I was three, and that particular uncle was from the California side of the family. It was also around that time I suffered an epic meltdown in an airport, likely bringing great humiliation upon my mother, for which she never forgave me. I mean, why else did she feel the need to bring it up time and time again in front of company?