Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. This was specifically in my garden. I was pruning, um, confederate jasmine, um, was growing on our deck -- and I lived with my parents -- like on the railing. And it's, it's a vine type plant, so I would wrap it around, and it took about three years to get it to the size where it would wrap around the railing and it looked beautiful and I was pruning it one day and my cousin's stepson came over um to help me -- and we get along really good -- and I said, "Will you help me? This is how we're gonna do it" and blah, blah, blah. And this kid, he h- -- he struggles with ADHD real bad. Um, I turned my back for two seconds and he cut through like a big mass of vines. And I was so angry, I was so angry. I didn't know what to do. You know, I don't know how to punish him because not my kid. And I thought my cousin was a little too hard on him anyways. Um, so you know, the way to show him that I was displeased was to make him go home -- was to say, "Okay, stop, you know, that wasn't, that wasn't okay. You didn't even ask. I told you not to do that. Well, you know, go home. We're not playing today." Um, and I think he understood, you know, like, he can't just do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And it wasn't like I screamed at him or hit him or anything. But, you know, he kind of learned a lesson that day like, "Oh, you know, I need to listen. I need to take time and listen and not let those intrusive thoughts kinda take over." Um, and I'll never forget that because he was totally different with me from then on. Like, it was like, finally, he understood like, "Oh, discipline happens. And I can't just f*** around all the time." Yeah, I don't think he knew what -- how much work I put into that plant. I think he just had a thought in his head and he just acted on it without even thinking about it.

When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a senior basketball player who kind of took me under his wing. We were both playing varsity basketball that year, and he helped me prepare for the season, et cetera. One of those ways he tried to take me under his wing was to help me flourish socially, so, um, I was fine with that to a degree, but then I remember there being this night where he took me out in his Ford Ranger, his light Sienna Brown Ford Ranger, and — is that even a color? Burnt sienna? I think what I meant to say is burnt sienna. But it wasn’t. It was just light brown, so scratch that from the record — in his light brown Ford Ranger. This guy took me out. He said “We’re gonna go to a party.” He’s like, “I know there's this, there's this girl in your class who I can tell is, you know, all about you. Let’s go see if we can find her, blah blah blah blah blah.” And I sat there just kind of quietly like, “Uhh, uhh, I don't know, can't we just, can't we just hang at your house and play Nintendo 64? You’ve got NBA Live 2000, isn’t that enough?” But he took me out and drove me to a cornfield. He drove down this little, like, dirt track, which is kind of sketchy the way I'm painting this picture, and maybe it was, but. And out of nowhere emerged, like, six other pickup trucks, and I've never felt so Michigan country in my life, and there was a fire. And when we got out of his Ford Ranger, there was, like, the popular girls from school that I had known from school and school alone, but they were smoking cigarettes and it was just like a — like I'd walked onto a movie scene from the 1970s, I don’t know. And there were the guys wearing their plaid shirts tucked into their jeans, their Abercrombie jeans, already completely wasted, you know, throwing back beers, and everyone was just sort of standing around. And I’ve — I was gonna say I’ve never been more uncomfortable, but I’ve had many uncomfortable moments in my life. That was, that was among the more uncomfortable social moments for me in high school.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. I may have told the story before. And it's a little bit of a twist on the prompt of "Have I ever shown up to a party and felt immediately out of place?" But when I was in college, and this is true for most people, you know, all of the parties were house parties. So you would just randomly get an address sent to you and it was, whatever, a friend of a friend, and that's where the party was that night. So one weekend, we had been told, "Okay, it's gonna be on this street. Here's the address." And I forget why, but I must have been doing something, maybe I was working and I was going to come later so I wasn't walking over with my friends. I was just gonna meet them. So I have my backpack and, whatever, mixers, uh, alcohol, and I'm walking to the house party. So I get to the address, walk in the front door, walk through the living room, into the kitchen, and I sat -- I start to open my bag and it just suddenly hits me, like, there's nobody here. And then I slowly turn around and I see a couple sitting on their couch in a living room. So I literally just walked, you know, directly through their field of vision. They're watching their TV on the other side of the room. I walked in between the TV and the couch to get to their kitchen. And I realized immediately, "Oh s***. This is not the house the party's at. This is just a person's house." And I said something stupid, like, "There's not a party here is there?" And they said, "No, get out." Uh, which I immediately did. Um, but that was mortifying.