EXTRA SPECIAL: RENEE’S STORY

 

In August of 2023, on the day that my Cousin Vinny retired after forty-three years of combating corruption and conducting criminal investigations for the City of New York, I had the pleasure of having lunch with him at a restaurant called the Crab Shack in Queens, New York.

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This particular event was a long time coming. In fact, cousin Vinny had been promising that the event would take place as long as I could remember.
It was in fact, 40 years in the making and then it finally took place. All I can say is, good things come to those who wait, and wait and wait.

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During my conversation with Cousin Vinny he shared with me that he did not know much about my “Special Needs” as a child.

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I can only attribute this to family being family and secrets being so tightly kept, and the fact that when I was born he was still a young child himself, eleven years old at the time and things such as my situation were not shared with everyone, especially the younger members of the family.

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It baffles me what the secret was, anyone with eyes could see that at the time, I was going to be a person with special needs.

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During the course of our conversation I shared many things with him about my life and the things I had experienced throughout.

He shared that he suspected as much, but never really knew the facts. At that point, I said to him, I should write a book.

In case you didn't know, Cousin Vinny is an author and has written well over one hundred books.

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It was on this day that he said to me, “Let’s do it, let’s tell Renee’s story as only she can tell it.” This meant that he would not write the book, but only do some of the editing, and that the words on the page must be mine, Renee’s. So began the creation of what you are about to read, “Not So Special”.