And there have been times in my career, especially recently, where I’ve had somebody -- I'll just give the more recent example -- they included me on an email thread that I had no business being on because they were trying to flex their muscles by throwing me on it, which is an interesting move given that they don't actually respect me in my role. But they understood the game they were playing with the other people on this thread, and so by including me, it was, in essence, saying, “[Name] was aware. That makes it okay.” I was not aware. It did not make it okay. I never okayed any of this, but they gave this impression from the way they wrote the email, and the way that they included me, that I was somehow a part of whatever was going down. And so I was very quick to nip that in the bud, and said, you know, “I was very unaware I was gonna be CC'd on this email. I have no business being on this email, and I've not been a part of this to date. And here are the people you really should reach out to ‘cause maybe they have more context.” Which were just other men managers. I threw them under the bus quite hard. It blew up in their face quite hard. And my supervisor, who also -- my -- both levels of my supervisors were on the email, and both of them were just like, “Yeah, that was necessary. He was gonna definitely tank you in some way if you didn't speak up.”  So I don't really love to say, like, “Yeah, I throw people under the bus all the time.” No, but I'm very clear. Like, if it's my monkeys, and my circus, sure, I'll take responsibility, but if it's not, I don’t wanna be a part of it, and I'm not gonna sit by and have my reputation and my name attached to something that it shouldn't be, even if it's great. I don't wanna be a part of something I really didn't have anything to do with.

As I've been reading through the papers before shredding them, I have been made very aware of the great impact of inflation -- of raising the cost of everything. As I have been working on the years 1968 to 1970 for the past three days, I noticed that the envelopes that had been through the mail were bearing six cent stamps. That's what it cost to send a one ounce letter through the mail between 1968 and 70.  For one thing, it's impressive that the six cents remained the same over those three years. Today, a one ounce standard first class letter going through the mail cost 82 cents. A forever stamp of 82 cents. That's a lot of inflation.

Um, I did have one bus experience, one time, when I went on a -- I went on a field trip, and we had a bus driver and we were somewhere in the Detroit area and he -- buses are big. They're just -- I, I can't imagine what it would be like to drive a bus. I don't even like driving a large vehicle. But we were downtown, somewhere in Detroit -- pretty tight streets, and he hit a car, and we just kept going. And it wa- -- it was v- -- the weirdest thing. Like -- cuz he just -- you hit s- -- you hit a car! Like, you just -- It was a parked car, so no one knew, and he just kept going! I'm -- I don't know. We really didn't quite know what to do at that point. I was not in charge, so I didn't do anything. Maybe I should’ve contacted the bus garage and let them know -- I’m not sure. But I didn’t. Maybe, maybe if I -- it were to happen again, I would.

The friend who helped me get my current position also helped me get work at the studio, and she's like, “You quit working at the studio, right?” A- -- this is my frenemy. And so I told her, “Yeah.” And nope. I didn't. And not that she has to know, because she doesn't, but I don't even wanna hang out with her like that anymore. Like, it's good to hang out with her, but only in moderation, and it has to be -- things have to be so light because she's the type of person that I can see using and holding stuff against me. Like, on Tuesday -- er, not Tuesday. I mean, yes. My car got towed on Tuesday, by the way, from work. No reason why. When I went to the towing place, they're like, "Illegal parking? Where did you park?" And I was like, "Where I usually -- where I always park at work. There's no sign saying otherwise” And they're -- you know, like, there's all these -- you know, it says “Parking Available.” It never says anything about paid parking. It says free parking from these hours, and I was parked there within hours! You know, my friends a- -- my co-workers told me, “Oh, hey. It might be because of -- they were doing some construction.” And then they went outside, and they're like, “There's no signs there.” And I was like, “Yeah. Exactly.” Like, what do you mean? Anyways, I paid 340 dollars. Not a big deal. But, you know,] I was in the car crash and I couldn't even tell my frenemy that, because I -- she already thinks I'm a bad driver, and I already know how she would react if I told her I was in a car accident. She would be like, “Well, if only you weren't such a bad driver.” Like, she would not show an ou- -- like she would play along and pretend that she share- -- like, cared a lot about me, but she doesn't. She would hold it against me. She'd be like, "Wow. You were in a car accident." So instead, I just told her that my cousin got into a car accident, and I was in the car, and she -- she's one of those people where she was fishing for that information. Like, she straight up was like, "Oh, but…

Tell us about a time you found a shortcut. Oh, wait, this is a really funny story. It's not about finding a shortcut. It's about lying to my little brother about finding a shortcut. ‘Cause my little brother, he was taking a -- just -- I think during that summer we were taking walks together and just stuff like that, right? Hanging out. And then I wanted to explore this new part of the -- this part of the neighborhood I never went to before and then my brother, obviously, like didn't really feel like doing that. So I told him it was a shortcut. And then we went in, I'm like I wasn't exactly lying because I didn't know if it was gonna be a shortcut or not. I just like, it could be a shortcut. But I told him it was a shortcut. So we went in, we explored a bit, and then we looped all the way back and he's like, “That's not a shortcut.” Like, “I know it's not a shortcut.”  But yeah, now after that every time I take my brother anywhere and I say there's a shortcut he looks at me and like -- he looks at me like, with like, what's it called? A questioning face. He doesn't trust me anymore in that regard. I mean that's fine. Don't trust me with that because I really, I really do like the exploring part so. Sometimes I -- I usually take more detours than shortcuts if anything.

A highway can technically still be used for a freeway or interstate, because it essentially is a roadway that takes you from point A to point B. By the same token, a gravel road can be a highway because that's what we used to have, or in some cases, still have as your main way of getting from place to place. Meanwhile, the freeway is exclusively for cars and trucks and maybe a passenger bus or two because of the way it's designed. One, for high speed; two, limited access. It's not meant for you to take your bicycle on it or skate or walk, or go on a horse drawn carriage.

My sister is really terrified of potholes. Anywhere. And as was mentioned in one of the questions, there are a lot of potholes in Michigan because of the water that freezes on the roads and then causes the cement or concrete or whatever it is to crack. But, when she lived in Ghana, she used to travel on roads that were a lot worse than these roads. And the cars used to just be swallowed up by these potholes. Like the roads were just so terrible. And the drivers would just drive over them or try to drive over them, and she got stuck a couple of times and had just some bad experiences with these potholes.  And so every time she sees a pothole she tends to tense up a little bit and gets nervous because she's afraid of hitting it or getting stuck in it or something. I don't know. It's -- I mean it's not a fear that causes her to not be able to drive or to have any sort of panic attack or anything, but she definitely -- you could like visibly see her tense when there's lots of potholes or with -- if there's a big pothole or something or if she thinks that somebody's gonna hit it, she will have a death grip on the the door handle or the seat or something. Which I guess, you know if you've had a bad experience with something it can cause you to have that sort of reaction to something.

Well, one of the stories that I had pretty much forgotten about was when my youngest sister was born. We had had a new house built over the summer. She was born in the fall. And so, when she was born, the doctor requested that she stay in the hospital -- my mom stay in the hospital a couple of extra days, so that we could get moved into the new house. First off, can you even imagine that being requested today? You know, they don't, they don't keep new mothers in the house -- or, in the hospital at all, let alone a couple of extra days, just because we asked for it.  So, yes, my mama and my youngest sister stayed in the hospital a couple of extra days. Several relatives and a couple of neighbors came over and helped us move in. And -- in fact, the guys, the painter, the painters were still downstairs painting when we move -- when we were moving in and one of my aunts heard, one of the painters say to the other one, "They're moving in upstairs," and sure enough we were, so it's like "You guys better hurry up and get done painting." Okay, so my dad, me, my siblings, we were in the new house that first night, and we had a fireplace.Well, we never had a fireplace before and we had all these scraps of wood around, you know, from building the house. And so we all thought it would be a good idea to gather up some of these scraps and start a fire, see how this works. Okay, so we did. One of the problems was that they weren't just, you know, scraps of two by four, they were also scraps of plywood and so on. So they had other stuff in them other than just wood, they had chemicals and glues and stuff. So, anyway, we gathered them up, we stacked -- stacked a stack in the fireplace and lit it on fire. All of a sudden, smoke starts rolling out of the fireplace. And my dad rushed in and he's like, “You gotta open the flue.” Well, we didn't know anything about a flue, we'd never had a fireplace before. So my dad reached in and opened the flue and then it was all good, but the house was already full of this…

So when I was in, it was, probably would have been when I was in junior high which is what we kinda used to call middle school. I was, I was still in Girl Scouts and we would take these cool camping trips. And like even like in the winter, it was amazing, we would -- we were so tough. I look back and I just marvel that we did this. But anyway, on one of these trips, my friend, who was, I have to tell you, not in the least bit wild or naughty. I mean, she was a super nice girl, you know got good grades and listened in school, came to all that, not a rabble-rouser or trouble maker. She pulled out from her luggage that she had brought some wine from home, like just a bottle of wine. Which was like, so shocking, because not only was [name] one of those good girls but I mean, we all were. I mean, we were a bunch of nerds that were still in Girl Scouts long after everyone like dropped out and you know, started doing other stuff. Anyway, [name] brought this wine, so thrilling and I had maybe one sip. And somebody else had one or two sips, [name] might have had some and that was the end of it. I think just the thought of it was so naughty that that was like enough and I think we were too scared to do more, get buzzed, get drunk, any of that. I don't actually really don't know how much the other ones drank, but I do know that I drank only the tiniest bit. And then otherwise the camping trip was just normal. A couple of -- sometime later, maybe a couple weeks later, I got a notification that there was gonna be a meeting. It was at -- this is what was the scariest thing about it was it was gonna be at the at the college, where my dad taught, but you know, it was evening and it was, you know, in some room and I, I can't remember if at that time I had a feeling like we were in trouble or if it just was mysterious to me. But when I got there, Our Girl Scout leaders were there, [name] was there, and the other girl who had taken a drink from the bottle was there. And I can't remember…