At parent teacher conferences one year, there was a woman sitting, waiting for me. And she came in and she started to really kinda get on my case about her daughter not doing very well. Her daughter was in my first hour class. And she never got to school. We started school at 7:50, and she never got to school till after 8:30 so that she missed most of my class almost every day. And the woman was just really kind of getting on my case. And I realized after not too much more that I had had her as a student as well many many years ago. And she got really fired up and finally she says, "I don't know when in the world they changed school to starting at 7:50 anyway." And I looked at her and I called her by her first name which right now, I cannot remember, but I said, "You know, school started at 7:50 when I had you. So obviously it was before 1975." Her mother looked at me. She went, "Oh. School started at 7:50 then?” I went, "Uh-huh."  Our principal came up behind her and he said, "I think you owe this lady an apology. You don't bring your daughter to school on time. We can't solve that problem until you do." I wanted to kiss him.  But it was pretty funny because it came around and it bit her in the butt. She didn't think too much of it, and it, it did, it came and bit her back in the butt. I looked it up later. We had changed school to starting at 7:50 in about 1971.

My cousin gives the best hugs. I call her sis. And I love hugs. I was -- we grew up in a hugging family. You didn't leave without a hug and a goodbye. My mom gave great hugs too. I miss her hugs. I have a girlfriend. I was just over her house on Saturday and she was having a yard sale. And she walked me out to my car and she's like, "You know me and my hugs! I gotta get my hug!" And I gave her a hug. That was nice. Hugs are wonderful. My mom used to say you have to have three hugs a day to get by in life. I get them now from my husband.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. This was specifically in my garden. I was pruning, um, confederate jasmine, um, was growing on our deck -- and I lived with my parents -- like on the railing. And it's, it's a vine type plant, so I would wrap it around, and it took about three years to get it to the size where it would wrap around the railing and it looked beautiful and I was pruning it one day and my cousin's stepson came over um to help me -- and we get along really good -- and I said, "Will you help me? This is how we're gonna do it" and blah, blah, blah. And this kid, he h- -- he struggles with ADHD real bad. Um, I turned my back for two seconds and he cut through like a big mass of vines. And I was so angry, I was so angry. I didn't know what to do. You know, I don't know how to punish him because not my kid. And I thought my cousin was a little too hard on him anyways. Um, so you know, the way to show him that I was displeased was to make him go home -- was to say, "Okay, stop, you know, that wasn't, that wasn't okay. You didn't even ask. I told you not to do that. Well, you know, go home. We're not playing today." Um, and I think he understood, you know, like, he can't just do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And it wasn't like I screamed at him or hit him or anything. But, you know, he kind of learned a lesson that day like, "Oh, you know, I need to listen. I need to take time and listen and not let those intrusive thoughts kinda take over." Um, and I'll never forget that because he was totally different with me from then on. Like, it was like, finally, he understood like, "Oh, discipline happens. And I can't just f*** around all the time." Yeah, I don't think he knew what -- how much work I put into that plant. I think he just had a thought in his head and he just acted on it without even thinking about it.

When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a senior basketball player who kind of took me under his wing. We were both playing varsity basketball that year, and he helped me prepare for the season, et cetera. One of those ways he tried to take me under his wing was to help me flourish socially, so, um, I was fine with that to a degree, but then I remember there being this night where he took me out in his Ford Ranger, his light Sienna Brown Ford Ranger, and — is that even a color? Burnt sienna? I think what I meant to say is burnt sienna. But it wasn’t. It was just light brown, so scratch that from the record — in his light brown Ford Ranger. This guy took me out. He said “We’re gonna go to a party.” He’s like, “I know there's this, there's this girl in your class who I can tell is, you know, all about you. Let’s go see if we can find her, blah blah blah blah blah.” And I sat there just kind of quietly like, “Uhh, uhh, I don't know, can't we just, can't we just hang at your house and play Nintendo 64? You’ve got NBA Live 2000, isn’t that enough?” But he took me out and drove me to a cornfield. He drove down this little, like, dirt track, which is kind of sketchy the way I'm painting this picture, and maybe it was, but. And out of nowhere emerged, like, six other pickup trucks, and I've never felt so Michigan country in my life, and there was a fire. And when we got out of his Ford Ranger, there was, like, the popular girls from school that I had known from school and school alone, but they were smoking cigarettes and it was just like a — like I'd walked onto a movie scene from the 1970s, I don’t know. And there were the guys wearing their plaid shirts tucked into their jeans, their Abercrombie jeans, already completely wasted, you know, throwing back beers, and everyone was just sort of standing around. And I’ve — I was gonna say I’ve never been more uncomfortable, but I’ve had many uncomfortable moments in my life. That was, that was among the more uncomfortable social moments for me in high school.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. I may have told the story before. And it's a little bit of a twist on the prompt of "Have I ever shown up to a party and felt immediately out of place?" But when I was in college, and this is true for most people, you know, all of the parties were house parties. So you would just randomly get an address sent to you and it was, whatever, a friend of a friend, and that's where the party was that night. So one weekend, we had been told, "Okay, it's gonna be on this street. Here's the address." And I forget why, but I must have been doing something, maybe I was working and I was going to come later so I wasn't walking over with my friends. I was just gonna meet them. So I have my backpack and, whatever, mixers, uh, alcohol, and I'm walking to the house party. So I get to the address, walk in the front door, walk through the living room, into the kitchen, and I sat -- I start to open my bag and it just suddenly hits me, like, there's nobody here. And then I slowly turn around and I see a couple sitting on their couch in a living room. So I literally just walked, you know, directly through their field of vision. They're watching their TV on the other side of the room. I walked in between the TV and the couch to get to their kitchen. And I realized immediately, "Oh s***. This is not the house the party's at. This is just a person's house." And I said something stupid, like, "There's not a party here is there?" And they said, "No, get out." Uh, which I immediately did. Um, but that was mortifying.

"Laughter's been helping a lot. Last night I'm sitting in the recliner. Now, mind you, the recliner -- we just rewashed the cover because when we bought this cover for the recliner, it became Tux's chair. And then we put a blanket on it, and the blanket became Tux's blanket. And so we've been washing things 'cause it's, you know, reached that point. Things need to be washed. And so I'm sitting in the recliner last night. My husband says to me, "You know he'd be so pissed right now." And even though we're so sad, like, he would. How dare I be in his recliner? That was his chair. No one else could sit there. We'd have family over and everyone would just steer clear because he was sitting there. And you could not sit in it. So, made things a little frustrating I guess in some ways, but he was such a character. I miss him so much."