Since I started posting to this blog, I’ve referred to my niece as “never having done anything embarrassing in her entire life”.  And that’s really not true.  She’s done quite a few things that I can share with the world and not complicate any pending legal action.  I have to be very careful, though, in the event I ever end up in a nursing home and she’s left in my room unattended.
    When she was about two, she got pneumonia.  Some folks say that kinda “dulled her point” a little, but I don’t think it did.  Her first word was hungry.  Actually, it was “hongry” and it was her first sentence, too.  She repeated that one word sentence incessantly for the next six or seven years.  Thinking about it now, she didn’t say “hongry”...she said “HONGRY!”.  Don’t go thinking she wasn’t fed, because nothing could be further from the truth.  For instance, one day I was over at their house, sitting on the couch and I found an M&M between the cushions.  When she walked by I held it out, she opened her mouth and I popped it in.  She smiled, munched it and skipped off.  That’s probably why I’m her favorite uncle...I gave her candy.
    Shortly after she started to school she came home one day and told my sister that she had decided what she wanted to be when she grew up.  She wanted to be a teacher.  Her mother was surprised that she had made a humanitarian choice at such a tender age.  When asked why she wanted to be a teacher, her response would bring a tear to any mother’s eye.  “Cause you get more Tator-Tots!”.
    Once while watching a commercial on TV featuring “Mean Joe” Green, she asked, “Who in the world would name their baby Mean Joe Green?”  Neither of her two kids is named Mean Joe.  They are Ape and The Terrorist.
    I also remember a time she was probably about four years old, when a bird flew through the open patio door and into the house.  My niece went berserk, crying, pulling her hair out and screaming, “KILL IT!  KILL IT!  KILL IT!”  I had no idea she had a fear of birds.  Another fear she had were tornados.  Now, this fear was rightfully earned, being caught in a tornado once when she was young.  However, she carried it to the next level.  You weren’t allowed to even say the word tornado.  She had a code word that was to be used whenever a tornado warning was issued...”monkey”.  She wore out a couple of mattresses dragging them into the hallway taking cover.  The craziest thing about it was that she wanted to be a meteorologist when she grew up.  I could just picture the 6 o’clock news with some crazy woman running back and forth behind the news anchors while dragging a mattress with one hand, pulling her hair with the other and screaming, “MONKEY WARNING!,  MONKEY WARNING!”
    She has always had a keen sense of observation.  For example, if she came over to your house and later something came up misplaced, all you had to do was call my sister and ask my niece.  She could instantly tell you where to look.  You see, whenever they visited, my niece would secretly inventory every single item in your house.

Me:  “I don’t think we’ve got a thing here to eat.”

Niece:  “There’s a package of hamburger meat in the ‘fridgerator and a Baby Ruth behind the microwave!”

Me: “I bought a new hole saw and I swear I can’t find it.”

Niece:  “Look behind the seat of your truck.”

Me:  “I’ll tell you what would polish that right up...Brasso.  But you’d have to go to the store to get some.”

Niece:  “You’ve got a half of a can way back in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.”

    Another time, my sister had picked her up from school and on the way home they passed by a horse pasture.  Standing right on the top edge of a deep gulley was a stallion.  Obviously he was downwind of a mare and had a little romance on his mind, if you know what I mean.  My niece, who had been around horses all of her life, proclaimed; “Now THAT’S dangerous!”
    Now that she’s an adult, she’s learned to be a little more discreet when doing anything with the potential of embarrassment.  We probably only hear about 1% of the stuff, but I store it away somewhere in my mind for future use.  A few years ago there was a rash of smashed mailboxes in town.  I’m sure people thought that whoever did it was either brave or stupid because it was down the main street through town.  It turned out that is was my niece.  She was driving her husbands dually pick-up and didn’t consider how far the mirrors stuck out.  You’d think that after the first loud bang she would have realized something wasn’t right. Being an honest person, she did go back and try to prop them up.  And I believe she actually felt so guilty about it that she offered to pay for the ones that were utterly destroyed.
    Now that I’ve written this, I just want to make sure all of my family members remember that in the event I turn up dead from an apparent hit-and-run, look for mirror prints on my body.