Stealing Cecily’s meme:

What are the top three dangerous & stupid things you have done:

1) At 14, my BFF and I, along with a guy named Joe, stole Joe’s parent’s van and ran away to California. We were living in the DC suburbs at the time. Joe sort-of knew how to drive. We made it to LA in about four days and then the cops pulled us over because the van was covered in salt (it was January, and snowing in the middle states). We were arrested and thrown in a detention center right around the corner from the hospital used for the pictures in the General Hospital theme. My dad came to get me within 24 hours, BFF’s mom left her in there for a week.

2) At 15, I was waiting outside of my apartment building for a cab to pick me up and take me to a shrink appt when some guy leaned over his balcony and started talking to me, invited me up. I went up, ended up smoking crack with him, letting him drive me to my shrink appointment high and then he picked me up afterwards and we smoked some more crack before his wife got home. Luckily, I realized at that point that crack was not the high for me– so I never smoked crack again, but (unluckily) it was a couple more years before I hit bottom.

3) At 30, I was at playgroup with Big Kid and there were some teenagers playing basketball in the court on the other side of the fence. A bunch of them began beating one of them (I have no idea if it was some macho game or not, but I wanted them to stop being violent in front of my kid), and I screamed at them to stop and they screamed some threats back, and I told them to “bring it on” and it continued like that for a couple minutes until they left, still yelling their threats as they walked away.

Obviously, numbers 1 & 2 will never happen again. But 3? Would I do it again? Probably. There’s really no predicting what will happen when mama-bear tendencies kick in.