So I remember, I started going to a summer camp when I was, I think, the summer in between 5th and 6th grade. So, 10, 11, maybe, if my math is correct? And, you know, nobody has game when they're in fifth grade. Um, certainly not me. I like was totally incapable of talking about how I felt, or, you know, things like that. But I went to the summer camp, and I like distinctly remember that we were all -- all the kids were sitting around the dock. They were doing, I think, like a life-saving kind of lifeguard demo and showing us what would happen if a camper went missing. And I remember seeing this kid and being like, "Oh my gosh, like this kid is so handsome, he's the cutest boy at camp," and knowing that I was never gonna be the person to like walk up and just talk to him, you know, around at camp unless he maybe ended up on my team or something. They broke all the campers up into teams. But anyway, I was playing basketball, and he came up, and like, that was how I started talking to him. And it's so funny to think about now, because, of course, when you're that young -- and then like, he then played every single day, and it did sort of seem like he was maybe interested in me, and because I was a baby, I didn't find out anything. Like I didn't get his contact information, I think back then, I didn't have a cell phone, but it was like AOL Instant Messenger I think was kind of the thing to do. I don't even know that I knew what school he went to. I maybe knew his last name? And so I remember, I was telling one of my friends about him when I got home. And I think I had like, tried to find him on AOL, I don't know, with whatever limited information I had and I couldn't. And they were like, "Oh, I know him," like, "I can give you his information." And I was, you know, thrilled, but they were just pulling a very mean trick on me.

This week's prompt reminds me of 2007 when we were in Paradise, Michigan during the Sleeper Lake Forest Fire of 2007. Now, we weren't in the fire. We didn't live there. We weren't drastically affected by it like people that lived there, but we were visiting. My in-laws have a cabin in the federal forest on the south end of Whitefish Bay and we were up visiting them. We had a room at the motel in Paradise. And I know before the trip, we were watching the news. We were worried that the fire was heading for Paradise, that it could take over the town. And thankfully, it did not. But it was surreal being in the town and having big -- the big lighted road signs, usually reserved for construction zones on the freeway, but saying, "Wild fire danger on US 123 -- or Michigan 123," you know, "Danger. Careful." Like it's, it's weird to see a big lighted road sign warning of a forest fire, not just potholes and construction workers. And the smoke was everywhere, and there is -- the one day that we were up there, we decided we would drive 123, since the road was open and just see what it was about. And we didn't figure we would see anything, you know, we thought it would be in all the massive acreage of forest north of the freeway between Lake Superior and 123. Not a freeway, I guess, just a highway. So, we headed out towards Newberry from Paradise, and it will always be, pun intended, burned in my memory. There were places where the fire had not only jumped the road and was on both sides of it, but we could still hear crackling in the underbrush from the car with the windows open. We could, I swear, still see some flames and embers flickering a little bit. It was not the main thrust of the fire. I mean, it had come through and jumped the road a couple of days before. But it was close. I'm surprised the road was open. Again, you could hear it crackling from the car. And then when we got through to the Newberry side, we could see the big staging area with all of the vehicles from firefighters and a Red Cross station. And you know, we drove to Newberry, we turned around and we headed…

And I just got home from a trip with my grandson to go see my son in Wisconsin. And we had a lot of firsts. It was a wonderful trip. Mostly wonderful trip. So my grandson is 8. And he can be full of a lot of fears and anxiety, doesn't like to try new things. So one of my jobs is to kind of push him into trying some things. And lots of times it's successful and he really likes those things. So I thought it would be fun to take the ferry to Wisconsin. So, I made that, made that decision and I took, took him up early in the morning. We had to leave, leave home really early because it set sail at 10:15, so we needed to be there by 9:30 at the latest to get -- to board the ferry. Drove the car on the ferry, but he was very upset about being forced to go on the ferry. And doing a lotta muttering, a lotta swearing under his breath. And I know from -- I know from just past history with him, the less reaction he gets out of me, the better, so. We went ahead. We went on the ferry. And he even had like sea sickness patches that his mom had gotten him, just anything to make this work. So, we got on, we saw the ferry coming up and he was still pouting in the car. And I said, "Look at those people up on top, like you can be on the outside on the top and look, on the deck and look, or you can go down under and be seated in there." So he didn't say anything 'cause he was too busy pouting, but we went -- we boarded -- after we drove the car on we boarded and, and we went in to where the seating was down below and he wanted to go up to the top. So I'm like, "Yeah, we can go up top and look around." So we went up there and there were just a few seats there, not a lot. But I was at -- on there early enough that I was able to get a seat. We were at -- still, still docked at this point. So, um, he got kind of excited about, about watching things and then he wanted…