Tell us about a time you witnessed an illness spread to the point where people were quote-unquote “dropping like flies.” Well, that time when I took my fifth grade class to Chicago on a field trip. It's actually the entire fifth grade. So me and maybe five or six other teachers in this particular job. So a lot of fifth graders. And the plan was we would take a bus to I think South Bend or Michigan City, and then we took a train, I think, from Michigan City. We took a train from there into Chicago, to the Museum of Science and Industry. Great trip. It's wonderful, and so many kids hadn't even been out of the county, let alone been on a train or been in Chicago. It was a win all the way around.  Now our plan was, on the way back from Chicago, take a train back to Michigan City, get on the bus, and the bus stopped for dinner. At – I think it was Golden Corral. Is that the buffet? Whichever one is the buffet, we stopped there. And frankly, I did not organize this trip. I can't recall if we had this set up with Golden Corral or not. I tend to remember there being a lot of – it seemed like we were descending upon it. You know, people were out for, you know, their evening dinner and then here comes one hundred fifth graders. I imagine it was set up ahead of time. But regardless, what a frightening prospect regardless, if you're eating at Golden Corral that night, if you see us all coming,  And you're probably wondering where the dropping like flies part comes in. And I'll tell you. They had all-you-could-eat cotton candy, as well as everything else. And I remember, it was like a battlefield at some point. I remember the first kid coming over, you know, as us teachers were sitting and eating ourselves, and saying like, “Oh gosh, I just, I just threw up. I ate too much cotton candy.” And at first you're like, “Oh,” you know, “that's not good. We're in a restaurant, and a child has vomited, but you know, we'll take care of this.” And then a few moments later a second child threw up from eating too much cotton candy. And you know, we tried in vain to have them stop…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. Okay, so, in Grand Ledge, there's a big quarry. And to get to the quarry, I think you have to go through Lincoln Brick Park. Now Lincoln Brick Park is basically just, from what I remember, is just a park that has a bunch of ruins in it. Like old brick buildings that have been knocked down, and all that's left is some, a couple walls of brick. And there used – ‘cause there used to be some old timey stuff going on there. And then there's this big quarry, the further you get in. And what we would do is, we would park on the side of the road and then we'd walk into Lincoln Brick Park in the dark. Pitch black dark. And then we'd walk through the park and get to the quarry. And there was a tree there that had a rope swing. And you could swing on the rope and land in the quarry. And we would do that at night, we would do it in, at like midnight and so we'd be swimming and in the dark underneath the moonlight, and it was really fun. And we'd bring a whole group of people, like ten people. And we'd all go swimming in the dark and jumping off those rope swings. But anyways, one time we were there, and we were dumb, ‘cause we parked right on the side of the road, to the – where the entrance of the park is. Like, why, why did we do that? I don't know. It was so obvious that we were there, we were parked there to go into the park. And so, the police came and found us. And as we were walking – we had already done our swimming, and we were walking back to our cars, and all of a sudden there's like, a police walking with us. And we didn't notice it because there was like ten of us and we're all in the dark and there's like another person walking with us that we didn't notice. And he just kind of joins in on the conversation. And then somebody's finally like, "What? Wait, who's that?" And then everyone stops like, "Who is that? What, what's going on?" And somebody goes "It's a park ranger!" And he…

I'm going to tell you the story of something that keeps coming back. It's definitely bigger than a black butterfly, probably about the size of a chicken, and is a 100% reminder of my father, who passed about 10 years ago.  When my father passed, he lost a lot of body functions. The ability to walk, and other things that go with aging. So when he passed, it probably -- certainly was for the better. So after we had my father's funeral and got done writing all the little thank you cards. We decided to go to the restaurant where we ate the last time with him. We all got in the car and lo and behold, what runs across the road in a spot where this particular bird is never, because there's so much traffic and there's definitely not open fields. It was a pheasant! We all said the same thing at the same time, we were so excited because that pheasant ran across the road. And, we knew that was my dad saying, “Hey! I'm okay! Look at me, I can run now,” because my dad was always associated with pheasants. And years ago, he used to hunt pheasants with his buddies and there's pictures of him and his buddies hunting pheasants. And he had them mounted on the wall and everything. Really enjoyed the pheasant. You don't see them around very much anymore.  So, my son gets married and that was not the best thing in the world because we had to watch him get married across the country via computer because of covid. His thoughtful wife wanted to make sure that my dad was part of it. So in her wedding bouquet, which was around -- on Halloween, she made sure that there were pheasant feathers in her bouquet.