We, we made french toast that morning. It just felt like, it just felt like we’re doing, like, these, these adult things. When you’re 18 or 19, and for the first time, it’s just at the outset of, of college, and you’re like, buying food materials on your own, it feels so novel. Went out and bought a brand new thing of cinnamon for our French toast, and — but, the same hand, you’re still kids. Because I remember when we were done with, um, when we were done with breakfast that morning, we were — again, were just kinda hanging out in my best friend’s kinda, like, basement apartment area that he had as a part of a bigger house that he shared with fellow college baseball players. Goofing around, and somehow, some way this, this girl that I had just met recently that I knew was gonna be so special in my life as long as I don’t ruin it… We were goofing around. She was laying on the floor. I remember pouring — what I was trying to do is pour bottled water into her mouth from like four feet in the air, like it, “This is kind of a cool trick, like look at us go.” It, it’s so stupid. I don’t know why. I don’t know what compelled us to do that other than, like, flirting. It can be very strange for people. I guess, like, we just wanted to goof around with each other. And so I remember, though, I was doing the thing where I was pouring water into her mouth, and I looked to my right, and I saw the cinnamon that we had bought that morning for the French toast, and in my head I remember thinking like, “Cinnamon tastes so good in French toast, and it tastes so good in cinnamon bread. All the cinnamon I’ve tasted has tasted delicious in my life.” I said, “What if I do this girl a favor, and I, and I swap the water that I’m pouring into her mouth, and I just pour the cinnamon instead. So she gets, like, this tasty treat when she’s not expecting it.”
It turns out I’m an idiot. This is before the cinnamon challenge. So this was not widespread knowledge — well, granted, it probably was widespread knowledge, but not for me. So, uh, when I poured the cinnamon into my crush’s mouth, she began choking violently and, like, sprung to her feet, had to go run into my friend’s bathroom and immediately began, like, rinsing her mouth out with water straight from the sink. It was probably not her best look, and it was all because of me, like, but she didn’t care because she’s trying to not die. She didn’t care how she looked guzzling out of the sink in the bathroom. And I felt so bad, and I thought I’d just ruined everything, and I just — even aside from my courtship, I felt awful for putting this person through this terrible moment. And so all I could think to do at the time was subject myself to the same event. I — without thinking, I just poured a bunch of cinnamon into my own mouth, and then I began choking violently, and for the next 10 minutes, she and I took turns just rinsing our mouth out in the bathroom sink. In hindsight, I could say it was kind of an opportunity to, to get closer to one another, kind of a bonding opportunity. But I never said I was a smooth operator. So, yeah. As of when I wrote this list, that was my number two moment in my life, and I think I probably had it there because I knew what had become of that courtship, you know. It worked out. She, she forgave me for, for almost killing her with cinnamon, and it led to an amazing relationship for its time. It led to me basically discovering my second family which far outlasted our relationship. And yeah, even now I, I very much look back fondly on that day.