I don't remember this but I'm going to tell you anyway

Do you ever tell a story about yourself but it's not one you actually remember? It's a story that someone (in my case it's always my dad) tells about you when you were little.
One of the things I find interesting about these stories is that it kind of shapes how you think of yourself as a child. Obviously you know what you were like at 10 years old...but what were you like at 5?
How do you know, other than from what somebody else has told you about yourself, what you were like at those early ages?
Judging from the stories I have heard about myself I was an ornery little cuss who kind of got a long leash to speak my mind and do my thing. I think part of why my sister is having the issues she is having with her oldest is that he is a lot like me and they don't give him that freedom to be the little maniac he wants to be.
And I support that %100.
That's why we had so many issues when I hit 13 and all of a sudden they tried to enforce...lets say a bed time?
I am sure I would be a much more focused successful person if when I was a child they had tried to point me in the right direction and hold tighter reins on me instead of letting me be a free range child.
I'm not complaining about my childhood. That would be so boring considering how relatively spoiled I was.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

My dad and I were in Zody's
( now we are getting deep with the old school So-Cal shit. Zody's was like Kmart...but not as cool. Think Wal mart Vs. Target...but down an entire notch in the food chain. We had one right by our house and I remember as an older kid being terrified every time we went in there that another kid from school would see me there)
I was about 4 and I had on my usual summertime attire: shorts, cowboy boots, no shirt, two six shooter cap guns on my belt.
About the no shirt thing.
I know they would have loved for me to be wearing a shirt in the store but frankly my dad was lucky I was wearing pants. My whole life I have always been hot. I can remember being yelled at all the time,
"put your shirt on!"
" but I'm hot!"
I bet I was 7 years old with high blood pressure.
The other thing about me being shirtless all the time?
I swam nearly every day of my young life. I was on a swim team from the time I was 5. I would climb anything. I would climb up into the top of a door frame and wedge myself there and just hang out and scare the crap out of people as they walked into a room. I had as a little kid a classic V shape muscle-man kind of body. That's creepy on a little kid.
Anyway.
There I am in my usual get up. Up to me walks a very large woman. She looks down at me and says "aren't you the cutest thing I've ever seen?"
I look up at this mountain of a woman and say " and aren't you the fattest thing I've ever seen?"
My dad says sharply " Michael!"
I say "what! Look at her she's huge!"
I have said it before and I will say it again, Nothing will embarrass you in the store faster than your own kid.
(Christina? "My daddy has 2 balls" Hmm?)