When I was young, maybe three or four, we had a bush in the front flowerbed with serrated leaves and tiny, pearly berries. They were entrancing, enticing, and I wanted them so badly. One afternoon while playing in the yard with the dog, Mom caught me trying to pull them off the lollipop bush, as I called it. I was insistent they were candy and alright to eat. She confiscated the few I'd snagged and I threw a tantrum I still remember almost two decades later.

My mother is a very caring and understanding person, in addition to having been a pre-K teacher for more years than I've been alive, and she didn't yell despite probably having lost a few years off her life watching my hand go towards my mouth. She simply scooped me up and tried to explain why what I was doing was a bad idea, why it was so dangerous. I disagreed vehemently because the berries were so pretty and innocent-looking. How could they possibly hurt me?

I was displeased but I never touched the berries again. They were on the side of the walkway for many years before the bush gave up and withered away; we pulled it out one fall well into my tenure in elementary school. In the meantime, I took a few years off the life of our neighbor across the street who was outside one day while I rode my bike down the street alongside a large delivery truck. If I even noticed the truck, I wasn't worried about it. It was driving on its proper side and I was on mine. Still, he freaked out, ran across his yard and the street, and grabbed my arm. I was so startled, I almost fell off my bike. He was yelling, causing me to start crying, then dragged me to my front door: it was all unfortunate. After huffing and puffing to my parents that I could have died, they closed the door, sat me down on the big leather chair and asked what happened. I told them petulantly that I was in no danger except when he manhandled me. Also that the neighbor was dumb.

About five years later, I wore my parents down in regards to my love of horses. I had started before the bike incident and my mother was quick to tell me riding was dangerous, just look at Christopher Reeve. I had no clue who that was and told her I wanted a thoroughbred.

Eventually I was surrounded by thoroughbreds and more. I spent every waking hour of weekends and breaks in the fields. In legal terms, they're seen as attractive nuisances, like pools. There's something about equines and aquatics that just draws foolish children toward them. And just like I'd accidentally gotten trapped under a pool float by my cousin and barely made it to the surface in time, I had a propensity to get into trouble with horses. I loved them more than most of them loved me and over the course of four years at the first barn, I got bitten and kicked multiple times. I was chased out of the field by a few, one time narrowly avoiding the gelding striking at my face over a fence as he reared. Another that I had a mutual love-hate relationship with tried to kick me in the head one summer and then dislocated my finger that winter.

Still, I was one of the lucky riders. I came out unscathed for the most part; I have more scars from wearing stilettos.

Around the time I was learning to drive, the neighbor's twins across the street decided it would be a good idea to sit on their skateboard and slide down their steep driveway into the street. I slammed on the brakes. Mom was calm, reminding me it was always good to check my mirrors. Then she chuckled about how it had been many years, but maybe she should go up to his door and tell him what his kids were up to. He had apparently become much more relaxed now that he was a parent, not a bystander.

Cars were scary to me. I already handled something that weighed 10 times what I did but this was somehow different. Maybe it was all the rules of the road or all the crosses that lined the telephone poles beside the athletic fields of my high school but I wasn't terribly keen on driving, not the way most teenagers are. I took to it grudgingly, viewing it as a necessity more than freedom.

It was an attractive nuisance, the same as parties and alcohol are in college. And I took to those like a drunk duck in water. I got myself into questionable situations freshman year, hit the nearby university the next year and at my first party was handed a cup of red liquid that tasted like Robitussin Gatorade. Sure enough, half an hour later, I was leaning against a wall, coherently telling my roommate my legs weren't working. She panicked and her boyfriend and his roommate (who had innocently handed me the cup) helped me walk out. That still wasn't a deterrent.

I continued to party all of my college years. My parents hated it. So I didn't tell them about ending up in a closet at a frat house or drinking out of a bottle I'd found on the windowsill, both at the same party. I was 21, perfectly legal and totally careless. I knew about safety; I knew that bad things happened and bad things had happened to me but I was still alive and a big believer in lightning not striking thrice. There were definitely nights I felt uncomfortable, ones where I wanted so badly to get back to my house and almost cried out of relief as I busted through the creaky screen door and hurriedly locked it behind me, even though nothing had followed me home. I'd give it up for some time but I always went back, just like I did to guys who treated me like a doormat. It was addictive in a way: a challenge, something I wanted to triumph over.

I remember a bad night where I walked a friend out of one of the frat houses. She was bawling her eyes out and I could barely understand her, but I did hear it when she asked how I did it. My voice hollow, I said you got used to it. Because I knew my parents feared equally for me, I'd always call in the morning if for nothing more than to let them know I was still alive. I was too smart for this, they'd remind me, but I was wily and loved it in a perverted way despite half the outings being pure misery.

There were plenty of times one of us would grab the others and dash out of an apartment right before it got busted by the cops. That didn't scare me, not even the out of control situations with angry drunk dudes starting fights in a living room. I didn't really feel fear until one night, walking on the sidewalk up Port with a friend rather than the usual three or four when a car drove by slower than the rest, windows rolled down to yell things at us. I spun in my heels, chilly in a short skirt and stared at these strangers catcalling us. She grabbed my arm like a frightened child. I had to be brave... I yelled back. My purse always had my phone, ID, emergency money and lip gloss, but I can't remember if I'd packed pepper spray.

I was older, not necessarily wiser, surrounded by tantalizing and harmless looking choices. There were all these poison berries to choose from, pearly and sweet. I'd like to say it was the baccalaureate and graduation procession that magically matured me, made me realize I was playing with fire and one of these days my luck would run out, but it definitely took a few more months for me to become a boring old adult, not wanting to stay out past 10. It was like a flip switched where I'd see these college kids and wonder where their brains were, like they didn't realize how many poor decisions and dangerous situations they were putting themselves in.

Moreover, I understood my dear mother's concerns. As with almost all parents, she had tried to protect me, to teach me that not everything I could hold in the palm of my hand was safe. I came home alive. Not everyone was so lucky.