My friends nicknamed me "Monkey Man" because I used to scale our apartment building four stories high hanging by my fingers from the brick ledge. I remember people called me a daredevil as well. I could never turn down a dare, no matter how outrageous. And my friends tested my bravado at every turn.
The adults had another name for me: "a handful," or more charitably, "a strong willed young man." I remember my dad saying that it took four sailors to hold me down during my first trip to the ER at three years old to get get my head sewn up after I cracked it open on the radiator. I was always pushing the edge of the envelope with my parents. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were my heroes. I loved new adventures, especially if they were dangerous and forbidden.
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