Updated from a column originally published September 14, 1999.

In case you're wondering, yes, I've always been this way.

Call it attitude, a unique view of the world, or faulty brain wiring; but it's deeply ingrained in me. You can even look it up.

Fifty-plus years ago, Granny Tyree made good pocket change by sending anecdotes about me to "It Happened Hereabouts," a column in the Sunday "Nashville Tennessean" devoted to kids' cute sayings, gourds shaped like Spiro T. Agnew, amazing coincidences, and the like.

One entry involved my father interrogating me about allegedly striking my younger brother.

"You hit him with MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't! I hit him with my FIST."

Granny also cashed in on my alphanumeric naiveté, when I asked Dad, "Why do they put so many zeroes in words if they don't mean anything?"

She even raked in dough for reporting that I checked the paper every Sunday to see what new clever things I had uttered. (Yes, Granny and I invented "synergy.")

Granny seemed reluctant to exploit my more public eccentricities, however. Like the time I ordered both mashed potatoes and French fries at Lewisburg's High Hat restaurant and the waitress "helpfully" pointed out that I had ordered two types of potatoes. I glared at her and queried, "Is there a LAW against it?"

My church singing could've provided ample material for Bil Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon. I thought the hymn "The Morning of Joy" was "The Morning of George," and I lustily belted out, "We shall come rejoicing/Bringing in the cheese."

And who can forget the time everyone finished a hymn and I was still bellowing out "Big Bad John"? (Was it mere happenstance that singer Jimmy Dean went on to market pure-pork sausage, while I remained all-ham?)

Once, my father yanked me out of church for corporal punishment. (I now wish I had halted my playful whooping and hollering long enough to hear what sort of trumped-up charges he was using against me.) As he was stomping toward the front door with me, I was grabbing the pews and yelling plaintively, "Help! Save me, somebody!" Of course Murphy's Law being what it was, that was the week the preacher hadn't hammered at the Good Samaritan ideal hard enough.

I used to "watch" television with my back turned to it because, I told my father, I could make better pictures in my head. I was 20 before he took a hint and bought a second-hand COLOR TV.

To my credit, I was always generous with the spotlight. Once when our family was on vacation, a stranger looked at my little brother and remarked, "What a fine boy!" I helpfully interjected, "Yes, we're BOTH fine boys."

So you can see why it doesn't bother me if someone comments on the fine columns of Dear Abby or Phil Valentine.

(My brother really did have some notions to rival my own. After we got drenched while hiking, he observed, "At least I'm dry on the inside!" And while explaining how to clean a fish, my cousin Steve put forth the unassailable logic that "You've got to kill them while they're alive.")

I would feel honored to have this column hang on a few refrigerator doors. But if my son ever visits your home and inquires about the column, I'm pleading the Fifth.

Is there a law against it?

©2017 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page "Tyree's Tyrades." Danny's weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate.