I volunteered at one of the famous golf tournaments where -- oh, the Pebble Beach, Pebble Beach Pro-Am, that's what it was. Pebble Beach Pro-Am. So I volunteered, um, there when I was at university with, um, think it was with, you know, some -- one of my sport management classes or something. We, we volunteered there. And so there were a bunch of celebrities who were there. Golfers, who were also like not just famous golfers, but famous people who golfed and were there for charity or whatever. And I thought for sure that I saw Rob Lowe, and I was excited ‘cause I saw him and I knew who he was and I thought, “Oh my gosh,” like, “I just saw Rob Lowe.” And then I realized -- so then I get back with, you know, a whole group of people that I was volunteering with, you know, that were in my classes or whatever and they were all talking about this guy Eric Close that they met and saw and, you know, and I was like, "Eric Close? Who's Eric Close?" So of course I go -- and this is before we had cell phones, like this was before I could like actually look anybody up, you know, just right then and find out who anybody was. But, so I went back, looked on the internet on my computer in my dorm room and found out that, you know, Rob Lowe was not at this event, it was not Rob Lowe, it was totally this Eric Close guy. And if you look at the two of them, they definitely look similar. But they’re definitely not the same person and it was probably, I mean, most likely Eric Close that I saw. Um, and I had no idea who that was, but he was on -- um, you know, the coverage of this event was on CBS and he was on some CBS show at the time, so it made total sense that he was there, and with the confirmation from everybody else that that's who they saw, I kind of figured that I was probably totally mistaken and it was not Rob Lowe that I saw.

When I started going to Michigan State, I commuted from Jackson to Michigan State, to East Lansing. So, I was a commuter and worked full-time, and I had a three year old son when I started at Michigan State. Um, and a lot of time he -- times he had to travel with me, sat through very long classes. And the Student Union was a place of refuge, a place of comfort, a place that gave me some calm.  In essence, it was -- it kind of was a place -- it not kind of, it was a place where you could go. Nobody ever judged or looked at us strangely when I would take my son into Student Union, into the women's area. There were couches and chairs and desks. And I remember how quiet it was, but also how not everybody turned and looked at me when I brought him in. It was a place for him as well. He grew up going to Michigan State University from the age of three to the age of, really, six because sometimes he had to come with me after he got out of kindergarten, which were half days back then. And, uh, we always brought a bag for him. He had a backpack as well, so he matched Mama, and he really liked that. And we would go to the Student Union and we’d grab something to eat. We would hang out together in between my classes, but he also would lay down and he would take a nap in there and I would study. It gave me such a peace of mind that I could do that, that I could -- that I knew that I had a place to go and a place to take him in between, in between my classes.

I had a crisis and I felt really bad, but I was watching some children and one little girl -- Oh, I stopped all of my group of kids to tell them, "Please, keep your hands to yourself." This is something I tell my preschoolers all the way through high school students that I work with, "Keep your hands to yourself. It's so simple. Respect each other's space. And it's for your own safety and it's for other people's safety." So I no more than said that and we started down the hallway and this little girl, one of my little girls in my group, came up running, "Help me! Help me! Help me!" And she was bleeding from her eyebrow, from where her eyebrow was on her forehead. And she's just screaming and could not calm down and, you know, the whole thing. I said, "What happened?", when she was able to talk, I said, "What happened?" [She] says, "Well, I hit the wall." And I'm pretty sure that the whole time I was telling this, she wasn't paying any attention to me about keeping your hands to yourself. And I think they were horsing around and she went into the wall because, because they were horsing around and, and had their hands on each other. So it's just -- that was just my thing yesterday. It was very tragic. It, you know, wasn't tragic tragic, but it was sad. Had to call home, had to send her home. And, hopefully, she'll learn her lesson a little bit, but I just feel bad for her. But it took a long time to get her calmed down and a long time to get her cleaned up. And, and I had some support from other people. But, it was, it was a rough experience. Not one of my better days at work.

What's the difference between a comet and a meteor? Well, they're fairly similar. They were both British jet and aircraft in the early stages of jet aviation. The de Havilland Comet was the world's first jet airliner. It entered service in 1949 and was well-liked but suffered from some accidents early on because of structural integrity problems and so on. The Gloster Meteor, on the other hand, was the first British jet fighter airplane, the only Allied jet fighter to actually take part in World War 2. Entered service in 1943, wasn't groundbreaking aerodynamically, but it was fairly successful as a combat aircraft. So that will be the difference between the comet and the meteor: one was a jet airliner – the first jet airliner, one was a jet fighter plane.

I'm gonna tell you about the time that I didn't meet Daryl Hannah. It's got a good ending in the end. So, when I was living in Virginia, there was a movie being filmed at a place about an hour away from where I was, called Smith Mountain Lake. I can't remember what it was called, maybe What About Bob or something? I never actually saw the movie. Anyway, Daryl Hannah was in the cast, and we had heard rumors that actually, that they were in the area and since, I dunno, I guess Lynchburg where I was was maybe the closest big town. I don't know if they were staying here or what – we didn't know the whole story but we heard she was around. Well I was out at the bar with some friends and they -- in came Daryl Hannah in a group of four people. And the rumor whipped around the bar. Or, I shouldn’t say the rumor, the news that she was there whipped around so fast, it would’ve been a very interesting study in group dynamics because, ’course no one wanted to say anything really loud, so the people would say like, under their breath like, “Oh my gosh I think -- isn't that Daryl Hannah over there?” and you could just see that everything got kind of like hushed and people were like doing furtive glasses – glances, and the whole energy in the bar got really weird for a minute and then they found their table and they just sat down and they were really tuned into each other and not looking around at all. Because I think they'd seen the fuss that was made. So, conversation in the bar kind of recovered and, I can’t remember who exactly I was with, but it was like a big enough group and some of the guys were posturing in this really dopey way like, “Oh,” like, “I'm gonna ask her to dance,” you know, or – I can't remember specifically what it was, but it was just really -- a lot of the guys were just really obnoxious about it. And, but here's the thing. A good friend of mine who went to a nearby college had always been a huge Daryl Hannah fan. He had a picture of her from the movie Splash like up in his room in the fraternity house, and just made…

Back in the '70s, I taught US history and I -- it was one of the first or second years that I taught and I'd assigned a project to the kids, and it was a group project and they were working with a partner. And these two boys decided to build a model of the Alamo. And so they built it out of sand, and they brought it in on a wooden board and it looked really great. It looked exactly like the Alamo. They had done a wonderful job sculpting it out of sand. And, they did a great job, they did their presentation, they talked about it, they explained how big it was, they talked about the battle, they did just a wonderful job on their, on their project. I was very pleased with them and they got a good grade and they were really happy with the way their sculpture of the fort had turned out. So the next morning before school, when I got to the classroom, and I went to the back to kind of look over the projects just one more time before the kids took 'em home, I realized that their sand had been put together with water and the water had dried up overnight and the whole thing was just a pile of sand on board. And I thought to myself, well it's a good thing I graded them yesterday. And about that minute, the two boys and some friends of theirs came in and they said, "Oh Mrs. [Name], we came, we wanna show our friends the, the Alamo that we made." And I said, "Oh, dear." And they said, "Why, what happened?" And I said, "I didn't touch it. I want you to know, I did not touch your project." And the boys said, "Why, what's wrong with it?" I said, "Come on. You gotta look at this." I said, "You made it out of sand and you could -- before I had it, it was all wet sand, right?" They went, "Yeah." And I said, "Look what happened when it dried out." And they went, "Oh my gosh, we're gonna fail." I said, "No, you're not gonna fail. You did a wonderful job on your project and I graded it yesterday, you're fine. But," I said, "You do have to do one thing for me," and they said "What?"…

We went yesterday to, um, Maybury State Park in Northville, there. And they have a track chair there for like disabled and otherly abled folks. And we took that out, although it was cold on June 1st! It was like 57 degrees, and then on the trails, you're completely covered by the trees now that they're fully grown in, so there is no sun, really, back on those trails except for a couple little areas. So really, it was, it was colder than 57 back on those trails, and even with a hoodie on and full length leggings on and, you know, sneakers and socks, I still couldn't do it. I mean, don't get me wrong. I did do it. We went down one of the paths and then just kind of did the shorter length and looped around and came back. There was kind of a weird gentleman, talking to himself, a-walking around, but hey, he didn't hurt nobody and he was just enjoying talking to his bendy straw. But that did put me on edge a little bit, just because, you know, I'm disabled and I can't really defend myself the way like other people can. Don't get me wrong, my wife was there and she would try to defend me life and limb, I'm sure, if she could. But, um, just made me a little bit on edge.  But we were fine and there was lots of other people around and everything went well, and it was still nice to get out there and just listen to the birds, and be in the trees, and smell all the smells, and feel the feels and hear all the birdies. I got two new lifers, and I wish I could look at my phone and see what they are right now, but it would take me off of this thing. Lifers on my Merlin app, the Merlin Bird ID app. Um, it's run by Cornell University and we just love it. We love figuring out what we've been hearing and then like some -- and then, you know, figuring out what they look like and then looking for them and trying to spot them like that. And while we were there, we saw the most adorable thing there at Maybury State Park. Right where we came back around to bring the track chair back to the garages, there's like…

Oh gosh, do I have a story for you. So, I think -- yeah, I was three years old and we were staying in a hotel because our house had flooded. And because we were staying in a hotel, we were living in such close proximity, I watched my parents iron every morning. And I was very fascinated with the iron. I watched them, like, iron their clothes to get ready for work. And there was one day where we were in this hotel where my sister was crying in the hotel bathroom and they were both in there helping her with something, not really sure. She's younger than me, so she was, she was two at the time of this. And because I was so interested in the iron and it had been out, since they had been ironing their clothes that morning, I walked over to it and I plugged it in and I just started ironing the ironing board. But the thing is, is that I saw them iron clothes and I didn't have any clothes to iron, so I figured that my hand would do just fine. So I ironed my hand. Immediately upon touching that iron I knew that I had made a mistake, because oh my gosh, did that burn. It was a such horrible pain and I just shrieked. My parents came running out, and they saw what I had done. My dad grabbed corn out of our hotel mini freezer, put it on my hand as an ice pack, and rushed me to the ER. They told me that I might never be able to open my hand again all the way, which, thankfully that did not happen. But yeah. I regretted touching that iron, but I didn't know that it was hot because I was stupid and I was three. And I think it taught me a very important life lesson about heat sources and what not to do. So, now I'm just extremely careful around everything.