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…