Heidi Tucker
"There was a huge spider on the side of the car door" I was about seven, and my best friend at the time invited me to go to her grandparent's house, and they lived, like—their house's up against like a woodland area, like, lots of trees and stuff, and they had a hill in their backyard, and us being not the brightest at the age of seven, wanted to ride, like, a car, a kiddy car down the hill. Like one that had like no resistance on the wheels, so we would just like go blazing down the hill, I guess. And so we were about to get in it, my friend was like in the car, and I started screaming, and I couldn't explain to her why, because I was too scared to talk. There was a huge spider on the side of the car door that was about the size of like my palm now. And I couldn't tell her what it was, and so she got out and like was asking me "What's up? Hey?" And I just pointed, and then she starts screaming too, and we ran inside. And then her grandpa came outside and let's just say got rid of the spider. Um, we never finished our plan because we were too scared after that. We just stayed inside for the rest of the day. But we researched it, and we found out that it was a wolf spider. I mean, I don't know how accurate that is now, but that's what we called it at the time. But, yeah, that was one of the scariest, I would say, because spiders are terrifying.
"I always just love drives, honestly sometimes more than the destination." Yeah, so we're just dinking around Metro Detroit. We went to the big mall, with the globe in it, and we went to a Korean barbecue place, and you know, the drive back honestly, was probably one of my favorite moments from that little day trip. And it wasn't even really anything spectacular. Like, you know, my friend was driving, my roommate was in the backseat. She's kind of dozing off. Yeah, I was in the passenger seat and like, the sun was kind of setting. It was kind of getting dark. The sky was like changing colors and stuff. It was very beautiful. You know, like blues and purples and pinks, pinks down like the horizon where the sun's setting down.And, yeah, we're just driving like an hour, hour 30, maybe of highway, and we were listening to music, and this sounds so dumb, at one point, my friend, she just starts putting on this like, frat-house hype music. I don't, I feel like this the genre. And she's like doing, like the frat flick while she's driving, like I can feel the bass like rumbling in the car around me. And I don't really like type of music, like especially during that semester, like I didn't really like a lot of that music, even less so since like, yo, this is so trashy. This is so trashy. But like she plays Hotel Room Service by Pitbull. Yeah, Mr. Worldwide, Pitbull--I think that's Mr. Worldwide. That could be Eminem; I don't know the difference. I know they're like both bald white men. I don't know. But she's playing Hotel Room Service, she's bumping that. I could feel it like reverberate in my body, and like I think it's a disgusting song for me, I think it's incredibly crass, I think it's just really gross the way he talks about women in this hotel. But like, just in that moment, like just being surrounded by like my friends, people who love me, like I don't know, like. It just, I actually like that song now because whenever I hear it, whenever I hear "Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn; we're at the hotel, motel, Holiday Inn," I just think about that road -- that little day trip to Metro Detroit. And, you know what? "Two, plus two, I'm gonna undress you.…
"And I remember thinking, 'I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life.'" So I have in abysmal memory. It's not something so terrible to where it has to be diagnosed as a standalone condition. It doesn't make my life unlivable, but it does make it sometimes quite frustrating. It mostly makes it frustrating for the people that I'm having conversations with because I will be quite comfortable, actually, I'll forget a lot of things alone in my own little ignorant bubble, but then my friends — I can't answer simple questions, like, "What did you have to eat today?" or "Yo, you remember what XYZ said last week?" or "during yesterday's lecture?" And it's especially bad when a friend is recounting something that they told me during like, really deep personal conversation, or anything that they deemed important about themselves enough to tell me at some point and they'll be like, "Don't you remember? I told you when my birthday was," or "this dramatic thing that happened when I was a child." And I will have to kind of bite my nails and be like, "I'm so sorry. I don't remember." Because how long can I keep up with this when I don't actually remember, any of the details? It makes me look like a terrible friend, but it's really just my brain arbitrarily sorting all of these memories into important and worth keeping around and unimportant or distressing for some reason, which is why I think I've had trouble studying over the years because memorization is just not my strong suit. But of all the memories that my brain decided to arbitrarily keep around, one of my most vivid memories — vivid and earliest, aside from really, really, really, really young. I was in fourth grade, and I was sitting during story time — it was story time or some classroom announcement, but it was at the teacher's big rocking chair that was at the very back of the classroom, there was a big blue, yellow, red carpet which I think is just a general color combination that's pretty ubiquitous in elementary schools. But I remember sitting on the edge of that carpet, not at all listening to what the teacher was saying, looking up at the tall blue store closet that was positioned at the edge of the carpet to kind of wall off the…
"I was like, 'Mom, mom, guess what, guess what?' and her friend went, 'Chicken butt!'" I remember this one time, my mom had a friend over, and I had some things I think I made something or found or something cool, and I wanted to tell them about it. I didn't want to interrupt her and her friend. I was like waiting for a while, and finally, I ran over, I was like five, I ran over, and I was like, "Mom, mom, guess what, guess what?" and her friend went, "Chicken butt!" And I had never heard this sentence before, I didn't know what chicken butt — like, I didn't know that that was a saying or a thing, and so naturally, I just immediately started like sobbing and like crying, and I was — I like ran from the room, and I like went and hid. And then my mom had to come and like console me and tell me this was just like a saying, that like, sometimes people will joke and like, say, "Guess what, chicken butt" and — but I was just like, I felt like whatever I had to share wasn't important, or like I was being made fun of. And so I was very emotional about it. And so now from that point on, anytime that anyone in my family says like, "Guess what?" someone else will say "Chicken butt!" and then I'll like pretend to get all emotional about it because you know it just — it really hurt my five-year-old self.
“I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left” And I want to talk about the dog. It's not my dog. It's my grandparents' dog. I first met him when I was 12 or 13, maybe. He was very cute and very lovely. Yeah, his name is Yellow. We called him yellow because he's a yellow dog apparently, but actually he's orange. Yeah, but the yellow is a really common name for dogs in China, so there are many dogs are called Yellow, Big Yellow, Little Yellow, or something like that. Yeah. We really like him because he's so clever and very kind. You know, he can tell who is one of our family at the first time. There was a time when I was shelling peanuts with my grandma and mother. He was just sitting near us as a guard. It seemed like he wanted to keep us safe, you know. I could tell that he's really sleepy because it was really hot, but he still stayed on the job. But we lost him about two or three years ago. He just disappeared. Also, actually, he was very old — I think he was very old as a dog. But he was still full of energy. Yep, but he just disappeared. I don't know why. My grandpa tried to find him but failed, so we still don't know, yeah, what happened to him. I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left. My girlfriend also like him, and she always wants to have a dog. But we don't know if there is a dog better than him in the world.
“You could not see my face because I was just covered in boxes” I'm not sure what's the heaviest thing I've ever carried, but probably that's got to be my dog when I was a child. I used to have a Bernese mountain dog, and I'm pretty sure she would weigh the same as me. I was, I don't know how much, but I was probably 12 years old when we got her. She was huge and she was really loving, so I would always carry her. But I love carrying things because it made me feel really strong. Like whenever I go to the grocery store, I always get a lot of food, and then I always get it from the car in one, in one go, like I never come back. One time actually, I got a bunch of Amazon packages when I moved to my apartment, so I had to get a lot of furniture for cheap. So I got it from Amazon and actually all the packages came at the same time and sometimes they bring them right to the second floor where I stay, um, but when I ordered the heaviest stuff, they left it on the ground floor by the mail room. So I had to carry all probably eight boxes by myself to the second floor, which was actually probably the third because the ground floor doesn't count. And I could have came back for the -- half of the packages, but I ended up carrying all of them stacked on top of each other, and I actually felt like a cartoon character because it's a very common scene when somebody's carrying too many things on top of each other and it gets -- like, you could not see my face because I was just covered in boxes, and I was dropping them on the way to the third floor, but I was just so committed to do it in one go. I'm not sure why I'd rather do that than come back, maybe -- yeah, I don't know how it's easier. But that's, that was really heavy, I remember. So maybe yeah, the heaviest thing I've ever carried would be my dog and the eight Amazon packages.
I remember riding bikes with my brother. My brother was like, "I wanna go ride around the block." And so he was able to do it alone. He was only three years older than me. And I was probably like seven. And I wanted to do it too, but I wasn't allowed to because I'm a girl. That's lame. I'm just a girl. Oh no, in the world. But during that time I was riding my bicycle, and for some reason -- I didn't realize it, but something had jumped in my shirt. And it was hurting, and so I started yelling, "Bee! A bee is stinging me in my shirt!" And I fell off my bike, and then I found out it was a grasshopper. So I have beef with grasshoppers. If I ever see a grasshopper, I'm telling it to leave me alone. They can jump way too high, and they can bite. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all. And also they have this thing where they can spit tobacco, which I don't even know what that is.
I will have 36 hours of flights and layovers to try and troubleshoot it. But I guarantee, I guarantee on the way back, I'm going to be such a mess, I'm going to be crying in NAIA. I'm going to be crying in the airport, in the terminal, in the plane. Last time I flew back from QC to Grand Rapids, I literally -- I was sat next to this grandma. And they gave -- they were passing out this like Haagen-Dazs ice cream. I don't know. I don't feel like -- at the beginning of the flight like Haagen-Dazs, and I was crying, like I was sobbing in my seat quietly, but albeit very, very distressed. And this poor little lady, she looks at me, and she does not speak any English -- I do not speak any Thai, because she spoke Thai. And I just -- I was just like looking at her, and she looked at me, and then she was like going over to like the, what is it? What is it called? What are they called? Stewardess? I think that's -- flight attendant. Flight attendant. And she's like, she's like gesturing for like more, and so she got like all these Haagen Dazs, and she gave them to me, and I was like, "No, no, like I'm lactose intolerant, it's fine." And she's like, "No, no, no, no take it, take it." And I was like, "Ope," so then I just had all of this Haagen Dazs, and it was kind of a beautiful moment. But I also was like, I feel so bad whenever I feel distressed in public that I'm like visibly, visibly crying, because then I feel like people are like, "Oh you poor thing, like, how can I help?" And I genuinely don't know, like, I genuinely have no idea. But the Haagen Dazs, the Haagan Dazs was a very nice surprise. She was so sweet. She was so sweet. Um, I just wish in the future, can have the same kindness in the airport. Otherwise, it may not be as enjoyable as a journey.
The phrase in a pickle means to be in a tough spot. Tell us about a time you have been in a real pickle. I was 20 years old, and I was single and pregnant. And when I told my parents, they kicked me out of the house. They put me on a bus to my brother's house. And there was a transfer from one bus to another, and I lost my transfer ticket. And I was in a pickle, and I didn't know what to do. So I started hitchhiking. Now mind you, I'm five months pregnant. I'm in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina where my brother lived. But I had to get from one end of North Carolina to the other. There's some really gross people out there. Men who would pick me up for sex in the car to give me a ride. One man offered to buy me a hamburger if I gave him a sexual favors. I was starving, and that -- I just couldn't, I just couldn't do some of the things that these men were asking me to do just to get across the state. So I climbed over the embankment, and I came down in a town. I didn't even know the town's name. It was Charlotte, North Carolina, I found out later. But I saw this green, luscious grass, and I went over to it there was like a little hillside incline. Just a little one, and I laid down on that incline, and I fell sound asleep, middle of the day. When I woke up there was three women surrounding me, asking me if I was alright. And then a cop showed up and asked me, you know, who I was, and what I was doing there, and why I was there. And the ladies had talked to the cop and pretty soon the cop left. And the ladies said they would take me home, give me a hot meal, listen to my story, and they did. I told them my story. They asked me why I didn't abort the baby, and I'm a firm believer in choice. But for me, it wasn't the right choice. So I maintained the pregnancy as best I could, I was in a real pickle. I hadn't eaten in five days. My brother didn't know where I was, I was somewhere in…