Well, I was talking to my cousin the other day, and when we were 15, she was 13, we were on vacation together, and because we were the two girls, and they -- we were in a cabin with so many -- only so many bedrooms, we were sleeping in the bedroom together. And we were on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and we were having a great vacation. My cousins, the two boys, were in the room next to us, and my aunt and uncle and my mom and dad were in the other bedrooms. And we were having a terrible, terrible thunderstorm, and of course, along the Atlantic Ocean, and the thunder and lightning was huge.  My cousin, who was 15 also, put a lampshade on his head, and came into our bedroom moaning and groaning like a zombie or something like that. Holding his hands out in front of -- going, "I am the --  I am the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. I am here to light up the room." And then there would be a big thing of thunder and lightning. And then he would go on. "I am scary. I am a lightning strike." And he went on and on and on. And my cousin and I, at first, we were scared to death, and then we started laughing ‘cause we knew what he was doing and it was so funny.  He died several years ago at a young age and we miss him a lot, but I talked to his sister and his brother on Friday, and we were laughing about that particular prank that he pulled on us and how my aunt finally came in and said, "I don't know what you're doing in here, but I'm trying to sleep!" And yelled at him, and dragged him back to the other bedroom and said, "Get out of the girls' bedroom and go to bed!"

Oh my gosh, I tried a jalapeño pepper for the first time ever at work. So one of my co-workers walked up to me and she was like, "Would you try a jalapeño donut?” And I was like, "Well, I've never had a jalapeño before." And she's like, "All these losers say that they wouldn't try it, and that's so boring." And, you know, this specific co-worker has been calling me, like, the most boring and stuck up out of all the co-workers. And I'm like, "Okay, you know what? I feel like I might try anything once." And when I said this, I didn't, like, think that she actually had jalapeño donuts or anything. I just, like, was saying it to try to seem cool, or whatever. So my co-worker picks up her bag of mini donuts and she gets a jalapeño, like one of the ones from the nachos, and takes it out of the fridge and puts it on the donut and says, "Here, eat it." And, like, at this point, I am in way too far to back out of this thing. Like, I have to eat it or else I'm gonna seem like a total loser. So I just put the whole thing in my mouth, and I tried my first jalapeño ever on a donut, and oh my gosh, it was nasty.  I'm not really a spicy foods person, like, at all, but here I was, eating this jalapeño donut. And I feel like it made it a little bit better than it was with the donut. It's like one of those chocolate frosted mini donuts, and I think the sweetness helped a little bit, but I drank a lot of soda after that. And it's not something I'm looking to do in the near future, but like, hey, at least I'm not the boring co-worker now.

Have you ever had any bad parking stories? This is actually a very deep shame that I have carried with me for a very long time that I've never -- I don't know if I've ever told any- -- I think I've told somebody this, but I don't, I don't remember. Um, I -- I made the wrong decision -- two times made the wrong decision, and I regret what I did. I would not do it the same way again.  And I'm not going to give any specifics here, but I will say I was -- I was probably 20 years old and I was pulling -- I was speeding around in my car. And I was pulling into a parking spot in a parking lot really quick ‘cause I was driving really fast and, like, feeling the adrenaline. I pulled into this parking spot like vroom, really quick, but I misjudged and I hit the car that was parked in the next parking spot and dented the door, like, really bad. And uh, and I saw what I did and I said, “Oh no. That's not good.” And instead of writing a note and leaving my name and number, I pulled out of the parking spot, and I drove to the other side of the parking lot and parked over there.

I don't get stopped by the police very often, and years ago, I worked at a drugstore. And of course, I always got stuck working the weekends and the holidays. Well, this particular holiday was the Fourth of July. Our city has an absolute huge Fourth of July celebration. There can easily be 250,000 people or more that flock to this area, so I didn't really mind working because I don't like crowds, there’s too many people, and I'm shorter than everybody else is. So I didn't go and I stayed at work. People came in and they bought munchies and beer and all kinds of things that they needed to go downtown to watch the fireworks festival. The fireworks festival usually starts at, like, 10 after 10, so it's dark. So it was just getting ready to start by the time I went home On the way home every day, and on the way to work every day, for many, many, many years, I have to stop at the railroad tracks because there might be a train coming, right? So on my way home there is a neighbor that puts on the most manic fireworks show you could ever think a person could put on. This fireworks -- I have to say, tens of thousands of dollars is what this person spends in fireworks. They have so many fireworks that at the end -- well, the next day, the fifth of July, very, very neatly stacked on the edge of the streets are boxes filled with empty mortars. So this particular day -- night, I'm driving home, and I see all of these fireworks and the booms were loud. I was just thinking about driving past all the sparks and everything. I just wanted to get home. And behind me there was a police car, and his lights went off. I did not think twice about it because certainly, you cannot have this kind of firework display in the city. Come to find out, he was stopping me. Why? Because I didn't even stop at the railroad tracks. I was kind of horrified because it's something that I do every single day, every time I go that way. It's just automatic to stop at the railroad tracks. So the policeman pulled me over and the first thing he did was he asked -- oh no. Do you know what?…

Tell a story about a prank. This one just shot to my brain. Old one, pretty uncomfortable story. Not exactly. It's a prank on my friend in high school. His name was John. For the purposes of this recording, I will not use his real name, is John. And he was my friend in high school and I was also friends with another guy named [redacted friend's name]. And they hated each other just could not stand each other. I forget what sparked it, but something sparked it and they just thought of both of them just hated each other so much, thought the other one was useless.  And after some event, some school gathering or something, I thought we, I was in the parking lot by myself, walking, to my car walking past John's car, and he left his window open in his car, and his book of CDs was sitting on his passenger seat and, back when CDs where like the most common form of media, music. And I just was like, "Oh, I'm gonna steal these and John’s, gonna freak out and think that someone stole all of his CDs." Tthis is like a big deal, like you invested lots of money and I got this huge book with like 200 CDs, right? Well, 20 bucks, a pop. You do the math because I don't want to. So, I just took that giant book and thought it’d be funny. And waited. I took it and he, like I thought, he freaked out. And then, I told [the other friend] about the joke when he was at my house. And he was like, "Oh, that's hilarious. That's so funny. Let me take some of his CDs out of there and then when you give it back, he'll be like, 'Oh phew, it was just a prank.' But then later, he'll realize he's actually missing more CDs." I went along with that part of it and I kind of -- I definitely regret that because I don't know if John ever got those few CDs back afterwards. And I think I told John in conversation, like, after I gave him the CD book back and he's like, "Oh, like prank" and then later he's like, "Dude, there's still some missing." I was like, "oh, I bet {he} took some because he was at my house." And then I think…

I just found out over the weekend that my great uncle passed on early, early Sunday morning. He had been struggling for quite some time, several months. He hasn't been doing that great and it was sort of a blessing, but it's always really hard. He was 91 and lived in [town,] Michigan most of his life. He taught for 30 years at the high school in [town] and I read the obituary and learned several things about him that I really did not know he -- he's not a blood relation, he married my mom's dad's sister. So again, my mom's uncle by marriage. So, I didn't grow up hearing as many stories about as about him, as I did about, Aunt [name]. But he was always a very, very nice man. Super hard worker. He said he worked at the high school for 30 years, but they also owned a cattle farm. Beef cattle farm. And he was a farmer through and through just really spent his life working on the farm and when he wasn't able to do that anymore, very recently, as I said 91, and he was still, still wanting to be out on the farm and it was just really hard for him when he no longer could really do that. And they sold their herd a while back, maybe a couple of years ago they sold that and then they just, like I think they're not even out yet, I think they have to be out of their farm, it's like 100 acres, 100 acre farm. I think they have to be out in September 1st or now my my aunt has to be out September 1st. So lots of changes happening up there, and I'm hoping it should work out that I can get a couple of days off work, so Mom and I can go up and see, see the family and my aunt is the only one left in that generation on that side of the family, so my grandpa passed and his two other sisters have already passed. So she's, she's kind of the last one.

I went with my friends and I asked one of my friends to put lotion on my back because we were all doing it and like spraying each other and, this one friend, she like sprayed an ‘S’ onto my back and then she was like, “Okay, you're good.” And I believed her like cause I was not paying attention and after that entire day of swimming, the next day, I have an insane sun -- what is it called? I just like got burnt so bad on my back and when I looked in the mirror because like obviously my lower back got it worse. But it was like a perfect ‘S’ on the back and, I was horrified. My skin was peeling. There was a huge line of distinction between my lower back and like, my butt like underneath where my swimsuit would have been and that was horrible. And I had to go to work the next day and it was just like hard to even have anything on my back. And so after that, I was like scarred basically. Like, I don't get it, like who -- who just sprays it and then leaves it like that? I don't get it, I really don't. Um but that will be one of the greater mysteries of my life.

All throughout middle school and then, my senior year in high school, that's when classes started moving to like the beginning of August and of course, you know, being a kid, you're like, “What the heck, man? Like I don't want to be in school right now.” I mean, my parents -- I was in the unfortunate situation where you know fortunately both of my parents worked and made their own money and living but unfortunately that meant as a kid, my parents always put me in a summer camp. Which again, I'm neurodivergent, a lot of the times I would be in the summer camp and I would go up to the teachers and be like, “Hey,” you know, like imagine an eight year old little me walking up to a teacher and being like, “Hey, I don't feel like socializing. I don't feel like talking to these kids. Do you mind?” Um, like literally I remember one summer before middle school, I hated the program, like the summer school or not the summer school because it wasn't summer school. It was just like a summer like daycare, after school type thing but they offered like summer hours. And I just remember I hated going to that so much, to the point where I asked my teacher -- I went to my teacher first and then I went to my parents. Well, I went to my mom first, I was like, “Can I do summer school?” And of course, my mom was like, “Ah, I mean, well, we'll talk to your teacher and see about it.” Of course, you know, my teacher’s first reaction was, “Why does she want to be in summer school? She doesn't need summer school.” And my mom -- you know, very unfortunately I think for a lot of us neurotypical women -- neurodivergent women is that, a lot of us were not diagnosed as kids but you have the “Hindsight is 20-20” moment where you're looking back at it and your parents are looking back at it and you were like, “You know, you asking to go to summer school -- is weird. Like most kids do not want to be spending their summer in school and learning any more than they have to, but you do.”

Grandma, Mom's mom, had a stroke. Um let's see, it's been, I don't know, months now, months months months. And this was a stroke that was so bad that the only two choices were; let her die in peace or go to extraordinary measures financially, medically, every way you can think of it extraordinary measures. So Mom doesn't want Grandma to die. So, Mom ends up going to the extraordinary measures. I'm talking life, flights, private jets, every doctor you can think of, everything. Well, while Grandma is all over the country getting rehabilitated and ends up coming back here to Michigan and finally starts doing well.  Well anyway while she's getting rehabilitated the oldest child has decided they're going to move into her house, right? Because they're thinking Grandma's gonna kick it. Well Grandma's been getting better and better and better. Grandma got her trach tube out, Grandma's walking, Grandma's talking, Grandma's gonna come home in a couple weeks, right? And you would think, “Oh, well she's not going to be happy that her grandson has moved into her house.” The thing she's gonna be unhappiest about is the fact that grandson has thrown out all of her earthly belongings or gave them away or sold them. Grandson cleared out Grandma's house because he thought she was gonna die and now Grandma's coming home to a house that is no longer hers. And I would love to be a fly on the wall that day but I feel -- I feel terrible for Grandma in this situation. Okay? Grandma don’t seem that lovely either. But boy, do I feel sorry for her. Can you imagine being however old she is? 80 years old well say and you have built a whole life up of things that you treasure and your grandson thinks you’re kicking it. And just gives it all to Goodwill, gives it all away! I know a few different people who have a few pieces. I mean it is just insane.

I dated and lived with somebody that I thought wanted to spend the rest of their life with me. And the — virtually the entire relationship they were seeking comfort elsewhere, but I was misled. We had -- I remember it so clearly, we were at a mutual friend's wedding and he was talking about what our wedding would look like. And obviously things didn't shake out that way and he's with one of the girls he had been seeing while we were dating and when they got married, a friend forwarded me one particular photo because she knew we had talked about this.  We would collect growlers from breweries we went to, it was our thing. And when we broke up I just gave him all the growlers. I didn't want them. I wasn't the biggest beer drinker in the relationship like you can have them and he and his now wife use those as their centerpieces to hold flowers. And I thought, “That’s kind of funny.” And then I wondered how she was misled, because like, did he not tell her he collected those with his ex? I don't know. How weird, right? [laughs]