Um, has there been anything particularly difficult this week? Yes. Yes, there has. I experienced a career first. I completely forgot about a meeting at school. Which doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world, uh, from afar. You know, there’s always business meetings and professional developments or whatever. If this were just a random staff meeting, I would facepalm, apologize to my principal, and move on. This meeting involved a student. And it completely slipped my mind. I had no idea I was even missing the meeting, and it’s entirely my fault that I did. And that’s partially why it’s so crushing that I did as well. I felt awful, awful.  I have this tendency to believe that kids should be able to know that the people in their lives at least somewhere will be there for them when they’re supposed to be. In fact, that’s kind of a cornerstone of why I am an educator, is to be that person, even if that student or child doesn’t have anyone else who can be that person, you know? And so then for me to not be that person, I know this is just a one-time incident in which this occurred, but it still, it stung me. It hit me deep. Felt super badly and also, it was just kind of a strange feeling because I didn’t know I was missing it. I was even talking about the prospect of meeting with a co-worker while I was supposed to be in the meeting. I don’t think I have ever dropped the ball like that before in my life.  What I ended up doing is I, uh, I felt it was appropriate to write the child with whom I was supposed to be meeting alongside another educator. I felt it was appropriate to write them an apology note. I met with them in person the following morning, and just kinda laid it out there and was straight up. Like basically like, “Yeah. I’m so sorry I messed up. There’s no excuse, and I just want you to know that I’m sorry, you know? And I’ll -- I’m going to do better next time.”  And in a way I guess, as my principal put it out there after the fact, and it did kind of come to me as I was struggling the night before with how badly I felt for leaving…

I think the biggest regret I had with [Name] is that when we were in college he said, “Look, every year West Point has this really big formal and I would love if you would come up and like, be my date for it.” And I said no. And I had a couple of reasons. One is that I was always really interested in [Name] as a friend, and I felt like sometimes he wanted us to be more than that. In fact, I know he, he came out and told me one time that that was kind of how he felt, but I don’t remember if we’d had that conversation yet when we were in college. But I definitely sensed it. So that was one thing.  The other thing is that I couldn’t figure out the logistics. Which, I could have. I mean, I could have taken Amtrak up there. I could have flown up there. We would have worked it out. And I was also worried about the cost, ‘cause I knew I couldn’t foot it on my own, I was a college student, and I was going to have to ask my parents for more money to do it, and I felt really guilty about that expense. So when I told my mom about it, I think like sometime after it would have taken place, she told me, “We absolutely would have given you money to do something that special.” Um, and that I shouldn’t have been so, you know, I shouldn’t have like, I don’t wanna say ‘self edited’ or whatever, but, you know, I should have -- shouldn’t have held back. I should have asked them about it if I’d really wanted to go. And now I look back and I’m like, that -- like a chance to go and see West Point, which I’ve never seen, which is, you know, this very amazing historic, you know, institution and to get to go to an event like that, which not very many people probably get to do, like I really missed out on a chance. I really blew it. I wish, I wish I had done it. But, you know, it’s how it is.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.  My grandma was like, the only female on the debate team in the 1940s when she was in high school. She was a pretty cool chick. And anyways, when she'd graduated from high school, you know, she was 17, and she desperately wanted to get away from her stepfather. And so that’s why she joined the Marines. And I guess to join the Marines, you had to be 18. But, um, she lied. She lied on her thing and said she was 18, but she was 17. And they didn’t check. She just -- they just were like, “Alright.” So she joined the Marine and then, uh, when she joined into the Marines, she got put in, um, what was it, Communications? She ended up learning Morse code and got to do stuff like that and she was -- she had a typewriter. I still have her typewriter that she used in the war, World War Two. And, um, there was a moment where they had, they asked, they were -- okay, so they were gonna be deployed overseas. She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to stay here. And the other place they were going was, I believe it was Hawaiʻi. I could be wrong, but I believe it was Hawaiʻi or some, somewhere, some island in the Pacific. I think it was Hawaiʻi. And she said, “Oh, that, that sounds better.”  And so they, they asked -- basically, the only thing that they needed from her was whether or not she could drive a jeep or, um, some vehicle that they had. Like a, an army vehicle. And if she could drive it then she didn’t have to get shipped out. She -- or she didn’t have to do whatever she didn’t want to do. Gosh, you know what, I wish I knew the exact details of this. But basically there was something she didn’t want to do. And the place that she wanted to go was Hawaiʻi. And so she lied again, and said “Yeah, yeah, I can drive, I can drive that. I know how to drive that.” And so they were like “Alright.” And so she like got into the car or the vehicle and just like totally bullsh***ed her way into, like, figuring out how to do…