This time the the introverted thinker is me.

My mother told stories when she was alive. They were very funny and meant to entertain. I was in my 30s before I started really thinking about the stories.

Two were about me and parties before I could remember. Both involved music. Music was one of the very sacred things in our family; we did not attend church but when I finally started reading the bible I was amazed at how much was familiar. It was familiar because my parents were always in choruses and sang sacred music, masses. But any music was sacred.

One story involved Humpty Dumpty. My mother said, "You were little." I was under three because it happened before we moved from Tennesee. "We had a party with a sing. You were the only kid." The sings were folk songs and my father played guitar. "You kept asking your father over and over to sing Humpty Dumpty. He finally made up 'the Humpty Dumpty Blues'. You were so angry that he didn't sing the nursery rhyme version that you couldn't talk and you stomped your feet at him. Everyone laughed." Truly my mother could make it sound funny. My father still plays the Humpty Dumpty Blues, especially for an audience. I'm not quite so sure that I found it funny, being the only child present and being the center of adult laughter.

The second story involved the guitar. Again, it was before I was three. My mother said, "We had a sing. You were the only kid there. In the morning after the party, your father picked up the guitar and it rattled. It was full of bottle caps. You had gone around and picked up every beer bottle cap that you could find and slipped them between the strings of the guitar. I called the other people and not one person had seen you with a bottle cap or putting them in the guitar. It took hours for your father to slide them out using a butter knife." She told it as a huge joke on her and my father.

I finally connected the stories and thought: pretty quiet and devious for a two year old. It's pretty hard to express anger at that age, especially if people laugh when you stomp your feet. But there's always the guitar......