“12 years ago now, a student at my school died of a drug overdose.”

Tell us about a time you knew something bad would happen before it did. It's just a gut feeling. I usually get a feeling in my stomach. I -- years ago, we're talking like literally 11, 12 years ago now, god, a student at my school died of a drug overdose. And I had started the work day and was just doing my thing and something felt off. And I was on call and as a professional you're on call 24/7. And it's the middle of the day, I'm chilling in my office and this student wanders in that I know quite well and he's just chit chatting and I was like, "You know [name] I gotta go." And I ran out. And I get a call as I'm like, literally walking to my car very quickly almost to a run, and it's an RA, and she's sobbing. And she's like, "My resident is dead," and she's a nursing student. And I'm like, "What? Have you called 911?" She goes, "I'll call them next." And I was like, "Hang up with me." Well, I said first, "Tell me where you are." She tells me and I'm like, "Okay, hang up and call 911." I immediately start calling everyone but it's like lunch time, so people are not around and it was just that gut feeling like this is bad, this is not -- it didn't feel like it was -- it felt like he'd been gone a while. And it had as it turned out, he died in his sleep from an overdose like hours before. His roommate didn't think anything of it. And then, finally thought something was wrong, couldn't get him awake, called the RA instead of 911, which is what people do in panic. And just everything about it felt off that day. So, I just -- you get a gut sense.

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“I was thinking to myself, ‘That is horrible, it doesn’t even sound like music.'”

But anyway, I, I just, it made me think yesterday and today about how music, um, imprints on us. And one thing funny happened here, a while ago, I was going into Meijer to go shopping and there was music on. And I was thinking to myself, "That is horrible, it doesn't even sound like music. It sounds like noise." And just as I'm thinking this thought, a woman right beside me says, "Oh man, that's a great song!" And I couldn't help but think, "Oh my gosh! It's because that is her era song and not mine." And so, whatever you were -- you, you grow up with say, between the time you're 10 and 20, the music you hear during that time period imprints on you, I guess you'd say and so that when you hear that, it brings back memories and I don't know, it's just makes you feel feelings like when you were young.

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“And, you know, nobody has game when they’re in fifth grade.”

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.

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“It’s weird to see a big lighted road sign warning of a forest fire, not just potholes and construction workers.”

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…

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“It didn’t matter to him ’cause he was just having the time of his life up on top, on the deck.”

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…

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“She keeps pushing me as close as she can, not knowing the assignment.”

So the other day, I was at the beach, and I was with my eight year old sister, right? And these two very cute boys were like playing with their little sister. Like my sister and I have a huge age gap, right? But like, they looked like they had a huge age gap too, but I only saw one at the first time, and then I realized there was another one, right? And so that was really exciting, right? And so my sister had the same swimsuit on as their sister, right? So I was like, "Go to him," and like, "Go to her and be like, 'Hey, we have the same swimsuits on, like we should play together.'" Of course, she didn't do it, but she went to -- was like, "Oh my gosh, we have the same swimsuit," and she was like, "Oh, that's so fun!" And so I'm reading because -- out on the beach because I had already been in the water. And my parents are like, "Oh, we gotta go," and I'm like, "No, no, please! The boys! The boys! Let me watch!" And that sounds a little creepy, but it's okay, right? Um, but anyways, I get in the water with her, and like, I keep having her inch me out, because I'm in this inner tube right? So I have her push me out towards them. And I'm trying to make it look like, like I love my sister, and I do, but I'm trying to make it look like that I want to play with her and like I'm like them because I just want to play with my little sister. And my sister's a little autistic, right? So she, she keeps pushing me as close as she can, not knowing the assignment, and keeps singing “Kiss the Girl,” like I swear, she's just singing “Kiss the Girl,” being the most, like, so loud. But it was so funny anyways, and I thought that was so funny.

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“I got entirely soaked. I had a umbrella and everything, but like it wasn’t enough.”

Like, on the way to work, there was also quite a bit of rain. Like, um, last week, it was me coming home, like after work there was rain for one day. The other day I brought my umbrella and everything, but it didn't rain on my way back. It did rain during the -- when I was working though. And then for this week, yesterday, actually, ran -- it rained on my way there. So I was, um... Basically, I got entirely soaked. I had a umbrella and everything, but like it wasn't enough, 'cause the rain was a lot, plus a lot of wind as well. And, yeah. I ended up having to go to there, change my clothes into my work uniform. And then, you know like the, the air dryer for the -- like the hand dryer in the bathroom? I basically used that for a little bit on my clothes and my wet bag. I did bring a change of shoes, like kind of Crocs-like things for -- I changed into that to walk there, and then my actual like tennis shoes were in my bag, a plastic bag, so that stayed dry, thankfully. But my clothes in my other bag, my tote bag, where I put all my other stuff did not stay dry, so that was not good. But eventually it dried out, and then, um, I wore -- I changed back into the clothes I wore on the way to work on the way back. So that also dried during that period. Um, so that's pretty much it, but like honestly, there were even people, like, who stopped me on my way there, just like, "Do you need help?" 'cause like I'm walking through the rain, the wind's blowing so hard, they were like, "Do you need help, like, driving anywhere?" I'm like, "Nah." You know, stranger danger, even if they're nice. But also, like, some people were just like, "You should go home." Like, "Nope, I got work." That's sad. But you know what? I actually like being in the rain. It's just like the after, the aftermath of it, like having to clean up the water and everything. Drying. That's the thing I don't like. But I do like being in the rain. That itself feels nice, especially during hot days.

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“That’s a pretty good feeling.”

I want to learn about other people. I wanna listen to their stories. So... I mean, all of that's really true and I really hope that the other person --- and, I guess, Stanford [University] --- understand how much I really do mean this. And I was talking with my mom about this, and she was like, "Well, you know, you don't want to be, like, too nice, because then they could, like, take advantage of you and not like in an evil way, just in a way that they wouldn't notice that they're not giving back as much as they're receiving," and I was like, "Yeah, I-I guess," but, like, niceness is such a... I guess, I dunno. It's infectious. I feel like, if you're nice to someone, they're gonna --- it's contagious, you know? They're gonna catch it, they're gonna be nice, hopefully. Um. And it's less about them giving back... that feeling to me and more about them just doing... doing something good to someone else, not even to me, but just like the idea of making some sort of a cycle. Of starting a chain of doing something good, and having it come back somehow, somewhere in the world to someone. That's a pretty good feeling.

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“Everybody’s looking at the same moon.”

The moon does make me think of some things like, I -- when I -- anytime that I would travel or when I lived abroad, I would always think that it sort of connected people together in that we all can see it. Maybe at different times, but everybody's looking at the same moon. From anywhere on the planet, you can see the moon. So again, maybe not exactly the same time, but I think that, that is a pretty cool thing.

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“Pretty soon, someone threw a rock at us again.”

We set an alarm clock for 1 o'clock in the morning so that at 1 A.M. we would be able to sneak out. So we dozed a little bit, and then at 1 A.M. our alarm went off. And -- so we got dressed and we silently exited that trailer, very silently latched the door, and went out into the moonlight. And the moon was lighting up the whole neighborhood that night, it was beautiful. So, we walked down the hill, and we started walking down the street. We got down – far down the street, one of our neighbors was having a party. And we could see that there were a lot of people in there, and we could see they were drinking, and we were laughing because we were watching them through the window. They didn't know we were outside. And then we decided to cut between roads. So we started walking across some pretty dark, you know, backyards to get from one road to the next road and somebody threw a rock at us. And that really freaked us out. [Name] turned around and she said she saw the shadow of a man with his hand leaning up against the garage as he was making his way toward us. So, we were scared and we started walking home, but by now we were pretty far away. So we were walking down the road, and pretty soon, someone threw a rock at us again. And we started running. We ran and we -- we ran and ran all the way back to the bottom of the hill. And then we had to climb that hill, and we were so exhausted climbing that hill, we sat down, we were breathing so heavy. We stopped breathing for just a second and we could hear footsteps running toward us. So we took off running. We couldn't see anybody coming, but we knew they were behind us. So we took off. We ran up the hill. We got in the trailer, we closed the door as silently as we could. And I remember there was just this little tiny lock. It was a tiny button that you just had to push in, and there was no way to test it to make sure that the door was locked. So we got inside and we both looked at each other and put our…

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