This is something that happened when I was probably four. My parents and I lived on a small farm, forty acre farm. We had a few beef cows. We had a few chickens. I don't know if we had pigs at that time or not. I don't remember the pigs. And there's a picture of me with some baby ducks, so maybe we had ducks, too. I don't know, I don't remember the ducks.  But these beef cows, you know, the purpose of raising beef cows is to have calves and raise up the calves and sell them. And, one day a guy drove in with his car and my dad and I went and walked over to his car and he opened the trunk and there was a calf. A little baby calf. And I was amazed. So my dad and this guy got the calf out of the trunk and we took it into the car -- ah, into the barn, into where the cows were. And I thought that that was how you got calves, some guy brings them in the trunk of his car. I don't know the circumstances of that. Maybe we had a cow that had had a calf that had died and -- I don't know. I -- my dad does not remember this at all. So anyway, sometime after that, my dad said to me, "The next couple of days, we're gonna have a new calf." And I thought, "Great!" And man, I watched for that guy in his car to bring that calf. I watched every car that went by. And this was, you know, we lived on a dirt road. Not many cars went by. So every car that went by, I looked at it hopefully that maybe this was the guy bringing us the calf. So, one morning when Dad -- when my dad said, "Oh, we had a new calf, got the new calf last-" or, "We had a new calf last night," I was so disappointed that I hadn't been there to see the guy bring us this calf. And I have no idea how long this thought persisted that this is the way you get calves is a guy brings them in a car, I have no idea. But you know, that's what I thought at the time.

What's the difference between tennis shoes and sneakers? And that one is a little trickier, just because where I grew up it wasn't particularly unusual to have those essentially be synonyms. And what I mean by that is, quite often, your sneakers would be what you might wear to play tennis on a court, especially, if you weren't, say, using basketball shoes or more stylized kind of sneakers and sneaker designs. Tennis shoe designs were maybe a little more basic 30-40 years ago. So, it wasn't necessarily uncommon to have sneakers being sold as the same kind of tennis shoes that John McEnroe or Chris Evert or Jimmy Connors might have an endorsement deal for. Especially you remember, you know,  Converse having both basketball style shoes and tennis slash sneaker style. I think there was like a Jimmy Connors model or some such might have been Converse, he might have had a deal with another brand, but for a long time, were quite interchangeable.

My teacher that I work mostly with is having a lot of problems with, with one of the new hires, and every time the administration comes in to observe this person, they do exactly what they're supposed to do. And when they, they are not being observed, then they just really don't do anything and they sit on the phone and they don't really help kids and, you know, they'll do what they're forced to do, but they just don't -- they're just inactive. So, this person -- so, this person got observed several times and he did not know that he was going to be observed. But when the administrator showed up he instantly got up and did what he was supposed to do. And my friend, the teacher I work with, when I -- I caught her later on that day, and when nobody else was there in the room, and she said, "I yelled at him today." And I'm like, "Well, why did you yell at him?" And she said, "I told him you do exactly what you are supposed to do, you do a really good job, when you're being observed. But when you are not being observed, then you, then you, you don't. I need you to step up and, and do what you're supposed to do all the time, not just when you're being observed." And she was just falling apart with guilt and she was so upset because, because she doesn't like being mean. She doesn't like to be that supervisor and it's a hard conversation, but she kind of did it out of anger and frustration without really planning it. So, a couple days later, when I was talking to her -- well, I told her at that time, when she told me, I said, "It's okay to be clear. You, you are doing him a favor. You don't need to feel guilty because what do you -- what's going to be the result if you don't? He's gonna get fired. He's gonna get transferred. Or it'll just be an awful work situation, and you'll talk behind his back. But you're -- if you don't talk to him, that's not fair to him." So, I, I keep using the expression "clear is kind" that comes from Brené Brown because, you know, you have to have those difficult conversations. So, a few days…

Okay so I used to have this skirt that looked like a skirt from a kindergarten teacher. It was like a jean, a denim skirt, and it had like an apple -- it had like some fruits that had been cut from a different color fabric. Like, I don't think it was felt, but it was like different colored fabric had been cut into the shape of fruits and then sewn onto the bottom of it, so it looked like it had a little fruit basket at the bottom. It was very homemade looking and I found it at a thrift store and I thought it was really ugly, and of course, that -- when I find something that's like uniquely ugly and hideous, like, I want to wear it. So I was wearing it. And I knew I just looked really stupid. And I don't know why but I really like that. I like to look stupid. And I was wearing it, and I went, I went to a restaurant and I was standing in line at this -- like, the counter and there was like a man there and he looked like he was like a construction worker type of a guy. And he looked at me with like scoffing, like ridicule in his face, and he goes, "What are you, a kindergarten teacher?" And I'm just like, "No, I work, I work in a bookstore." He was like, "Huh. Well your skirt looks like a kindergarten teacher." I was like, "Well, okay." And then I kind of just ignored him. And the way he said it, with like disdain, I was like, "Oh, oh, man." Like, "I'm so embarrassed." He's -- like, I knew I looked dumb, but like, he's over here pointing it out and like, that's not cool. Like I'm supposed to be subtly dumb-looking not like obviously dumb-looking. And not, not that being a kindergarten teacher is dumb. You know, what the hell? Um, I have nothing against kindergarten teachers, but like, the way he said it made me feel really stupid. And so I like never wore that skirt again ever. Yeah. Thanks, dude. Made me feel really dumb.