Back in the seventies, when they had water beds -- the eighties I guess. Yeah, it was mid eighties. I had one in my bedroom -- a twin size one upstairs. And I was pregnant. And I was in the bed -- water bed. I loved that water bed... until I was nine months pregnant, and I woke up, and I thought the bed had broke because it was all wet, and it took me a while to realize that my water had broke, not the bed. The waterbed had not broke, but my water had broke. And I stumbled down the stairs and told my mom, "Let's get a move on." I remember standing out in the hallway and testing it. I whispered it. Of course, it happened late at night, and she was sound asleep in her bedroom, and I opened the door and I whispered, "Mom, my water broke." And I said it a little louder, "Mom, my water broke." She still didn't wake up. So I went and shook her and said, "Mom! My water broke!" And she jumped out of bed, and I had a baby that night.

This past week, as a side note, one of my fifth grade students -- we're, we're writing opinion essays, and for the first time all year, I gave my students permission to listen to music -- school-appropriate music -- quietly as they worked. And it's a win-win because it, it locks them in. A lot of times they focus harder. They go into their own little zone and then I win because they're quieter as a collective and it allows me to work with writers one-on-one a lot easier, you know, without feeling like I'm distracted by others and whatever. But when we, when we got to work, I was helping a student and then suddenly I began hearing, like, -- how's it go, "Whopper Whopper Whopper Whopper." It was the, the Burger King jingle, and I looked across the table and I saw one of my fifth graders, like, bobbing his head with his headphones on who clearly had not realized that his music was playing through his actual computer speakers and not his headphones. And I kinda just stared at him for a moment, as did his classmates, and once he realized what was happening he, he blushed hard. He turned, he turned a deep red and he realized his headphones had not been plugged in. But he owned it, and it turns out he was -- his musical choice was listening to an hour loop of the Burger King jingle, I think unironically 'cause he -- he was planning on doing it privately, and he's not much of a, a ham. He's not a class clown, but that was just his go-to song, was the Burger King jingle.

You said "What's the best thing you ever found in your sofa cushions?" Well, when my children were little and our furniture was new, we had a blue sofa -- couch. You can call it whatever you want. But we had a blue one. Had three cushions across the bottom and all the cushions were not connected to the sofa so they could be picked up. One of my children while I was at school -- and I think that they were home with their dad cause they were little -- they did something to the sofa that stained it very badly. I don't know if it was paint or what it was. So my husband decided that the way to get the stain out was to use bleach. And he put bleach on the co- -- sofa cushion. And of course it automatically turned bright white. And he had all kinds of problems. He didn't know what to do. And he took it outside and let it dry. And then he turned it over. And the cushions were just the same on the other side, so I didn't realize it. And it took a while and that furniture wasn't the kind of furniture that you had to like vacuum the sofa cushions. So it was a long time I think before one day something happened and I dropped something, and -- a kid dropped a toy or I dropped some money or something and I thought "Oh, I'll just pick up the sofa cushion." And I lifted up the bottom of the sofa cushion and the bottom of the sofa cushion had a huge white stain in it. And I kind of went {gasp} and my husband came out and I said to him "What happened here? Who did this?" And he just looked at me with this look on his face, and he said "I did." And I just, just -- I didn't know what to do. I just didn't know whether to start yelling, start crying or whatever. It was a relatively new sofa. But I figured oh, well, there's nothing that it's gonna happen. That was on there for the next 15 years until we got rid of that sofa.

So, what dish makes you feel connected to your culture or family history? I think I would say cabbage rolls. I mean, I can remember my mom making them when I was a kid. And -- but the, the big -- the reason I think it comes to the front of mind is not the frequency with which my mom made them, but the fact that in third grade, we had a class project where everybody brought in family recipes, and then it was turned into a cookbook. And actually, in my book, mine's the first and the recipe says this is a popular main dish in our family. Uh, so the entry that my dad -- this is -- my mom wrote this, I did not write this as a third grader -- is this is a popular main dish in our family and traditionally is always served on holidays along with the turkey, ham, or whatever. So that may be true. I don't really have memory of that. But I guess it's not hard for me to imagine that my Cze- -- uh, I was gonna say my Checkoslovakian step-grandmother, but in fact she was Belgian, but whatever. I'm not surprised to hear that in my Czech family, because my fa- -- my grandfather was Czech, that they would have served cabbage rolls, and that this was going to be a holiday accompaniment or whatever because it was a lot of work. My mom didn't love to cook. She didn't make it that often. Anyway, but because of that being the family lore, which I am reminded of every time I open up this ratty little cookbook from third grade which has mimeographed pages, um, I know that that's -- if ever I were to have a cabbage roll, I definitely feel like it's a family dish.

I was 16. My sister was 18. And that summer my dad had a brain aneurysm burst and -- in his head and, um, he was extremely lucky that he survived it and, uh, was in the hospital for several months. So it was during that time when he was in the hospital, my mom was at the hospital with him and it was just me and my sister at home. As she was, uh, making chicken nuggets for lunch, like frozen chicken nuggets, and she had put the whole package of them on the cookie sheet or baking sheet to put in the oven and I asked if I could have some and she said "No" and I was like, "Are you serious? Like there's like 20. You're really gonna eat all of those?" And you know, we just went back and forth with that because she was just being unnecessarily jerky about it, which is a pretty good reflection of how we were growing up. She's a button pusher and I'm super sensitive, so it was a bad combination when we lived in the same house. But we were also I think pretty stressed and emotional because of my dad and, uh, things escalated. And I actually don't remember what was the straw that broke, uh, the camel's back so to speak but I ended up getting so angry that I, I picked up the bottle of ketchup that she had put out for her chicken nuggets and threw it across the kitchen. It, uh, it hit the fridge and exploded and there was just ketchup everywhere. It looked like someone had been murdered there and I just like burst into tears and sank onto the floor and my sister, who I love very much and, um, am good friends with now, just looked at me coldly and said, "I'm not gonna help you clean that up" and walked out of the room. Oh, so that was quite the kitchen mishap, and she did not help me clean it up. So I had to, to clean up the exploded bottle of ketchup and that actually felt like a really good, uh, encapsulation of that time in our lives.

“Tell us about a time you thought you saw one thing, but it turned out to be something else.” Okay. Okay, it's food too for me. Okay, so I was at my Uncle's funeral. And at the church, like under- underneath it -- no, it wasn't underneath the church, must have been next to the church. So, there was the banquet hall basically like, where all the food was set up. And there was this bread that it -- I was like, "Holy s***! Chocolate bread? They make chocolate bread? I have never even dreamed about this before, like, this is amazing! Chocolate bread!" And so I got a few pieces, you know, and I sat down and I started eating this chocolate bread. I thought it was chocolate bread. I had never heard of anything called pumpernickel bread. It was so disgusting. I hated it. I was so angry. It was nothing like chocolate bread. I was just very upset. And ever since then, up until I, I was like in my 20s basically, I refused to eat pumpernickel bread because of it. Turns out, pumpernickel bread's pretty good, but because of that experience I was like, "I don't want it. Bad...feelings," you know what I mean?