So I was not brought up in the tradition of going trick or treating. And I do not buy candy on Halloween day to dish out to children at night. I do not leave my porch light on. And for the past several years, since 2021, when I moved back into this house in Georgia, I have never had anyone come and knock on my front door on the night of Halloween and I was not expecting it this year. But at 6:45 p.m., on the night of October 31st, I was sitting in my living room watching NBC Nightly News -- an important tradition for me. When all of a sudden, I heard a large loud BAM, BAM, BAM on my front door. Someone was beating hard on my front door. By the way, my doorbell is broken. I have a screen door that I usually keep latched between my wooden front door and the Great Outside, but I have not been latching it recently because the latch had been -- become hard to work. And so I was just leaving it unlatched, not realizing that I was putting myself at risk. So because they could open the screen door, the people were banging hard on my front door. It sounded like someone was chopping my door down with an axe. Well, of course, I was not gonna open the door under those circumstances because I didn't know whether I would be facing an axe murderer or not. That taught me a valuable lesson: from now on, I'm locking that screen door every time I come back in the house.

Oh, there was one time -- this'll show you the quality of our team -- one time, this was when the kids were a little bit older now, and I'm gonna say, 12, 13 years old, we were practicing, one day. Practicing our moves and stuff, and the girl that was on first base, she was our first baseman. She's standing there, and the batter hit the ball, and she took off running. She got confused that she wasn't a runner that she was a baseman, but she thought she was a runner. And she started running and we kept saying, "No, no, no! Go back, go back, you're not, you're not a runner." And she just kept on going, and she got around to home plate, and she's jumping up and down. And somebody said, "Look at your hand. You have a glove on your hand." [And she went,] "Oh no!" And we had, we had a good laugh and reassured her it was fine. You know, she just got excited, but that was a memorable moment in our less than stellar career as coaches and having our softball teams.

Anyway, I say all that because it culminated in our team being down by one point with seven seconds left, playing in front of our home crowd. We just happened to be hosting districts that year. And all their team's at the free-throw line. Really good free-throw shooter at the line. Misses a second free throw. And we have no time outs left. So a kid that I've been coaching since 8th grade -- when he showed up to tryouts wearing football gloves for basketball tryouts -- he grabs the rebound, and he runs the length of the floor and he fires up like this desperation 3-pointer with four seconds left or so. He's a good 3-point shooter, but he's panicking, so he fires it up from like 25 to 27 feet away. It hits the backboard and hits our really soft rims, which are great for shooters roles, but backboard, soft rim, rattles around, and pops out. And right on the spot, from about eight to ten feet away, super awkward place to tip a basketball, one of his teammates, one of my former players -- or I guess I was coaching them that year too -- jumps up from about eight feet away, grabs the basketball and shoots this really tough in between tip-in shot at the buzzer, and it drops. And the very first thing I do is I look at the referee for clarification 'cause I can't believe what I'm watching, and he's making the motion that, that the shot counts. And the minute I saw the referee who was standing right next to me, make that motion, I sprinted onto the floor. And I remember having this, like, for like three tenths of the second, I remember thinking, like, "Is the rest of this gym crazy? Like don't they know what they just saw? Why am I the only one running onto the court right now?" And literally like a split second later, everyone else comes piling on the court behind me to celebrate this incredible upset win.

My son played high school football, and he was one of the stars. Everybody loved him. He was quite the jackpot at school. Very popular, very popular, he was a Homecoming King and he was Snowball King. He was Prom King. He -- if there was something to do, he did it. He even got most improved student that year of their graduating class. He got the most improved. He came into high school, his high school career as a chubby, little fat boy who was very dark -- goth almost -- had everything to do with death and dying, and all his writings were very dark, morbid writings. His pictures were marked dark or morbid. And he changed almost overnight into this wonderful young man who was outgoing and gregarious and -- he was just phenomenal. And for his graduation that year, I had printed out 101 invitations, which I thought was a lot. And I gave them to him, and he came back to me and said, "Mom, is there any way you could, um, make me up some flyers?" And I said, "Sure, buddy. How many do you need?" And he said, "About 250." I was like, "No way is 350 people coming to your graduation." I made him the flyers, and sure enough, 350 people came to his graduation. It was pouring down the rain, I didn't have enough food. The food I had was cooked outside with -- using an umbrella to grill the brats. The cake was super gone by the time the teachers whirled around. He had teachers and coaches and everything come to his graduation. He was amazing kid. He really turned himself around.