Things that have shaped me Part Duex

Damn. Lost the started blog. That is so irksome.
Anyway,
I left for Christi's last night. Worked thru lunch to leave earlier. Got here about 11, so pretty good time.
I was thrown into a deep think while driving. Remembering when my cousin had surgery on her knee. Really we should have seen it coming. She fell alot. Seemed she stepped wrong, or had her leg collapse under her, or slipped. The dreaded ACL. Anyway, I think it was the summer between our Junior and Senior year. It wasn't the first day of school but it was probably the first week or so. She had been able to ditch the wheelchair and take up crutches. The Portland area, true to it's nature, rained. Think of newly polished, institutional tile, made even slicker by drips and trails of moisture brought in on the shoes and umbrellas of sleepy students. Then add hard rubber tipped crutches to the mix. She went down just inside the door with a scream that still raises the intense feeling of protectiveness in me. I think Gracie says it best, in Miss Congeniality, "...if anyone, [anything] tries to hurt one of my new friends, I would take them out. I would make them suffer so much that they'd wish they were never born. And if they ran, I would hunt them down." I dropped whatever was in my hands and ran to her. She kept yelling her leg was trapped under her. It wasn't. Barely bent, her stitches split, her leg was pretty much paralyzed to her. She couldn't feel it's true whereabouts. Thankfully, our HS was RIGHT next the hospital so we hauled her into a friends' parents' suburban and rushed her over. Once the docs drugged her up she wanted to head back to class. Yes, she's crazy.
Welcome to my family.
The remembrance of that feeling made me wonder where I got the belief of protecting one's own. Of course there is some instinctualness to it. But it's more than that. I trace it back to my Grandfather. As head of our little rambling family tree, we knew without him saying the words that he would rush to our side if we ever needed him. Whatever attacked us, befell us, or we got into, he would go thru it with us. I still feel this way about my relatives. It's an attribute I also give to the God I envision. Lots of things about my grandfather I attest to God. He was not a perfect person by any means; but he was the most Godly man I ever knew. I hope I am like him in as many ways possible.