I feel iffy on dressing up. Really strange thing about me that I try to analyze and typically fail. Sometimes I love attention. I like being noticed. And, on the same hand, sometimes I hate being noticed and I don't know what triggers what and how to reconcile those two. But I do know it's been a, a lifelong feeling that it all started -- or at least was initially recognized when I was in preschool and for show and tell, one of my classmates brought in, uh, his proton pack -- his toy proton pack from the Ghostbusters. And also I think maybe a Ghostbusters, like, you know, uniform which was s- -- I don't know, above and beyond. It was so extra honestly. But I remember watching that show and tell and I'm like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I want nothing more than to have the opportunity to wear that outfit and wear the proton pack 'cause I've seen the commercial for the proton pack so many times and I always knew my mom and my dad would never buy that for me. And so like I had this dream of using it just once and lo and behold, you know, after show and tell, other kids in the class were supposed to get an opportunity to use the thing you brought in to be shared. And when it was my turn, I remember being struck suddenly with this extreme sense of self-consciousness where it's like all I wanted to do was dip into my fantasy world where I could be Peter Venkman with my proton pack. But all I could think about was that I would have to do that in front of others in the classroom. Who were all playing on their own. They would have never cared or they, they would have looked at me and said, "Well, yeah. Of course he's pretending to be Peter Venkman. It's the whole Ghostbusters get up." But I refused as a kindergartner when it came down -- er preschooler, sorry, when it came down to it. I said, "I -- no thank you. I can't do that. I, I don't want to put on the Ghostbusters stuff," even though it's what I wanted more than anything. And that's kind of like, carried on to the rest of my life. I don't know if it…

I live in a rural area, and we have wetlands and that involves cattails. And I don't know if you know this 'bout cattails, but at the end of the season they basically turn into milkweed, kind of. Like, you know, milkweed pods, they have little seeds and they're on floaties. Or, like, dandelions. Imagine that but like cattails. Like, you're, you're imagining like this hotdog, corn dog shaped thing. If you squish it, it actually loosens up just a ton of these tiny little seeds. Like, imagine like a dandelion but compact. And so you can basically explode them and their floofs go everywhere. And on the way to work, because he [someone the diarist is seeing] also escorts me to work on bicycle, I picked a couple of cattail heads and I left them in the basket of my bicycle during my shift. And so when he came to pick me up after my shift was done, it was past the time that the store closes, so nobody was there. Doors were locked. We exploded a couple of these cattails under the canopy of one of the entrances. And then, one of the other guys I'm seeing, the next day, was like, "Hey, so I had to go grocery shopping this morning and I noticed under the entrance canopy there was a bunch of fluff. Was that you?" because I am very known for being playful, and I was like, "Yeah!" He's like, "What was that?" And I was like, "I exploded some cattails." And the rest of the story is then my next shift after that, I exploded a cattail -- 'cause I picked another one on the way to work again -- under the canopy again, and I was a little bit early for work ‘cause I like to do shopping a little bit like for my lunch and stuff, and anything I need. And I also get ready at work -- at work. So like, I put on my shirt, and I do my hair and everything like at work so that I look presentable, 'cause riding your bike to work destroys your hair and makes you sweaty and everything. And so I'd exploded this cattail and then I came back down after getting ready. I still had some, you know, time to waste, and the person I was seeing was still there after shopping…

Back in the 1960s, my grandmother wanted to do something fun for all of her grandchildren. And so she decided to make pajamas for everybody in the family for Christmas. This was before this was a thing that people did like they do now. And this was my grandmother deciding to buy -- I don't know -- like, a hundred yards of striped flannel. It was the stripes that reminded me of it, and my cousin called since I’d recorded a few minutes ago and that made me think of it. Anyway, my grandmother made red and white striped nightgowns for my mother, my aunt, and my cousins -- the girls, and I. For our fathers -- my uncle, my dad, my grandfather and my two cousins that were boys -- she made black and white striped flannel pajama pants. And coming out of the box, they looked pretty cute…‘til they all had to put them on and modeled them. Well, they looked like they were a bunch of convicts from some prison. It was very, very funny. But they didn't want to hurt her feelings, and so, since we all stayed at my grandmother's big old farmhouse, we all wore our pajamas that night and she was very happy. My cousins got to go home. But my dad -- we had -- mom and I had to stay for another few days and so we had to wear our pajamas for a couple more days. My dad was later bit by the snaps at the waist because my grandmother didn't squeeze them tight enough and the metal part started to come out. And after a couple of days, my dad decided that as soon as we got home those pajama pants were going to be toast. But actually I think he cut them up into car polishing rags, which he probably got a lot more use out of. But it was pretty funny to see our entire family of 14 people wearing either red and white or black and white striped pajamas in the 1960s. Not something that people did back then.