One day, a friend of mine came over to visit, and he -- also me and my roommate. So it was the three of us visiting, my roommate and I on one side of a very small porch, he on the other side, and we had decided to order pizza. So, we're eating pizza on the porch in a city, and I'm -- and, I should say, if this makes a difference to anyone, that I owned the home that we were at, so I'm not being a total animal when I describe what happened next. But I'm eating the pizza, and I don't really like crusts that much, so I was throwing the crusts into the bushes. And in my head I'm thinking, "Eventually, something, some critter, will find this." So as I'm doing this, my roommate who by nature is anxious -- and during COVID was beyond anxious, to the point that it was often stressful to be around her. So, anyway, I'm throwing these crusts into the bushes and she says something about, "You need to be careful or you're gonna lure, you know, like a skunk here." So, you know, in my head I'm thinking, "Yeah, it could be a skunk that eventually eats this. It could be a raccoon or a possum or birds, you know, why does it have to be the worst thing?" So that's the first thought I have. And the second thought I have is like, "Okay, well that's not gonna happen anytime soon." And I say as much, I say, "Yeah, I'm really not that worried about it, it's fine." As I'm saying that, middle of the day, a skunk walks across the street, right towards where I was throwing these crusts. And honestly, I think skunks can have rabies, and they definitely are not usually active during the day, or at least I don't normally see them, especially in an urban setting, but it was just like comedic timing. Immediately after I said that, this thing waddles across the street and I'm like, "Come on." Like most of the time when my roommate is being very anxious, it is unfounded. And this time when I thought maybe it was unfounded, it turned out that I was very wrong. So thankfully, we just kind of slowly -- I and my roommate -- slowly went in the house. And my friend…

My mom made cakes, as like a side hustle back in the '80s and early '90s -- like wedding cakes and whatnot. So, there was like a cake supply store that she would often drag me to and, thankfully for me, there was an aisle that had some cake toppers that were out, kinda there for kids to play with, was my understanding, because I'd been to that cake store a number of times and that's exactly how I spent my time. There was a little Batman cake topper and a Superman one. Those are the ones I remember in particular, but there was a few others. My mom would plop me down and I would just go into my little imaginary world with my Superman and Batman and company, and she would go take care of her cake business. And one day came along where I was like -- my little five-year-old head was like, “You know, it would be a lot cooler -- would be if I just took these cake toppers with me, took 'em home, then I could play with them whenever I wanted.” And so I did. Put them in my pocket, knew that I was stealing them. I was fully aware of the fact that it wasn't the right thing to do, but I did it anyway. And so, flash forward to my grandpa's house. It was me, my grandparents, my dad and my older brother, three years older than me. And we had this kinda routine where you had dinner and then after dinner, they would roll the TV into the dining room and they would turn on Jeopardy and watch Jeopardy and continue having conversation at the dinner table anyway.  And it was during this point after dinner, when I thought it would be smart -- in my head, I was like, “This’ll, this’ll be fine.” And I thought it was smart to pull out my new toys that I had stolen and play with them at the dinner table, kinda low-key. And it was my older brother who saw that and he knew what he was doing. I remember being able to tell from the tone of his voice. He was like, “Oh, hey, where'd you get those from?” And I wasn't ready to answer that question so I'm sure I stumbled, I don't remember what I said, but it soon…

Okay, this was um -- the story that I'm thinking of was a time when I tried to be very quiet to remain undetected and I was successful and I was very sorry. So, I was still in grad school, but I had a really good job working in, in an office on campus here. And, uh, I was working late. I don't know if I was working on my job itself, or I might’ve been working on stuff for -- you know, as a, as a grad student, sometimes I would work on my school work there, and they were, they were fine with that. That wasn't a problem. But anyway, it's late at night and I hear one of the people who works there, um, come back into the office. Like, I had been completely alone for a couple of hours, but they -- I don't know if they'd been out to dinner or had gone to like the lo- -- the movie theater that was downtown. But they came back. She came back and she had her husband with her. And at first, I just was really quiet. I don't know why I didn't immediately make myself known to them. I think I thought they were just coming in, she was getting something, and they were gonna leave again, so that, that must have been it. So I didn't make myself known to them. ['Cause this was kind of in] the back office. And the way the office was laid out, if you were, like, where her office was, you couldn't see whether lights are on or anything back in, in -- like in my part of the office.  Well, they started to have an argument and it got really heated. And, if I'd known it was gonna turn out that way, maybe like the minute they started to bicker, I could've, like, made some noise or something, and then pretended I hadn't really heard anything they'd said, and then that would have just ended it. But then, I didn't and again I just sat there hoping that they would, um, you know, wrap it up quickly and go. But it was quite an argument. And she was really crying and emotional, and she was talking to him about, um, you know, how this was so indicative of his personality and these deep issues she felt he…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. I'm on a walk right now. I'm on a walk ‘cause it's nice. But my transition lenses are not cutting it for this sun and also, I feel really paranoid walking outside, sometimes. But mostly just ‘cause yesterday, I went to the gym. And they made me a little paranoid ‘cause I was doing a rowing machine and I turned around and two guys are just like, looming over me, watching me. And the other rowing machine is open. So I'm like, "What the f***!" And so I make eye contact with both of them and then they spring into action like they were just on NPC mode in the pause menu or some s***. I don't know.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. So I was actually always really good at standing up to bullies, which is probably why I didn't get bullied very much. Um, and like I was a fat kid, so I was definitely in danger of being bullied. But it rarely happened, and I think that was because I shut it down so fast whenever it did happen. Because the key to shutting down a bully is making them feel stupid. Which, I don't love --  like, I don't want to go through life making people feel stupid, but if they're going to be cruel enough to try and bully someone, then, yeah, I'm gonna be there for that. Um, because they do it to feel empowered, right? So when you make them feel stupid, that's the exact opposite of what they want. And interesting thing is, the only example I can really remember wasn't really making them feel stupid, but I think just calling them out.  It was in 8th grade. My best friend, uh, we had math class together. And she had told me that in a -- in science class -- I don’t know if -- I guess it was earlier that day. The chair she was sitting in had broken. And, you know, she fell on the ground and everything, and I mean like, I think we can all agree that in 8th grade that would be humiliating, right? And people laughed and, you know. And so this girl who was, like, a popular girl just could not get over it and was like, bringing it up and bringing it up and I -- see, I don't know if it was the same day or not, because I know she had brought it up a lot and she just kept laughing about it. And it wasn't even like she was trying to be super cruel about it. She just thought it was so funny but, like, there's just no sense of like, thinking of how that might impact somebody, which is probably a problem popular people have. Not that I would know.  But anyway, so we were in math class, and my friend sat behind me and then [name] sat behind her. And [name] was telling someone about the incident and laughing and I knew [friend’s name] was feeling s***** about it because…