The crazy women that raised me.

I don't talk much about my family, well, except my kids or grandson, but I decided to rectify that in 2012.

Stories. There were always stories. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and the first time you heard them felt the same as the 37th time you heard them. Somehow, they never got old.

This is the story of the mom, the grandmom and the would-be rapist.

It had to be sometime during 1969-70. My mom was separated from my dad and living with my grandmother.

She'd come home late from partying and decided to cut through the alley to go into the house through the back door and out jumped a man from the shadows. He grabbed my mom, who was quite tiny in stature, and dragged her into the walkway next to the garage. She said he immediately started groping her under her obligatory 60's mini-skirt (with white, patent leather go-go boots) and growling into her ear how he was going to rape her.

My mom was pretty unique, to say the least.

Anyway, she decided in that instant, to play his game. She began cooing to him that there was no need to rape her, she 'd go along willingly and while they were at it, why be out here in the alley? We can go inside my house where it's warm, she says. There's all this snow, she says. She might slip in her boots, she told him. She said she grabbed him by the hand and lead him to the house. Once they got to the enclosed back porch, she asked him to wait, that she had to make sure her mother was asleep and she'd sneak him in.

My mom went in, woke my grandmother, and told her what was happening.

My grandma got up, found a hammer, and went directly out to the porch like a raving lunatic. Threatening the would-be rapist's very life.

Apparently, he couldn't get out of there fast enough and he never bothered my mom again.

Yeah, that's the kind of women that raised me.