I was talking to some people today about the fact that I found an engorged tick on my child -- horrifying. And that we had treated them with doxycycline, once we realized that the tick had been on for quite a while. And in the process of having that conversation, it was brought up that there is a lyme or plush, you know, tick vaccine that's being trialed in Europe and in the U.S. And it's in the third round of trials, so it's seemingly successful. And will be launched at some point. And as we were having this conversation, somebody that I was talking to said, “Oh yeah, I've heard of this.” There's this, basically, conspiracy theory that the pharma companies are dropping ticks, like increasing tick populations to try and push this basically. That was the context within which they had heard about the vaccine initially. And it just made me think about how nothing is accepted as a fact anymore. Like something, which should be celebrated, a vaccine to protect against lyme, which is you know, a very prevalent at this point, condition and can have some pretty terrible outcomes, you know, not fatalities necessarily, but chronic pain and, you know, all these things. like stuff you don't want. There used to be a time where somebody would be like, “Hey, the measles, there's a measles vaccine!” and the country would be like, “Oh! That's wonderful.” Generally speaking, maybe not 100% of people, but the majority, and now, it feels like any good thing, whether it's a lyme vaccine or something else is met with skepticism. And the hard part is, it's so impossible to gauge. Like have things actually shifted so much? Is it the case where a minority are happy about something like this? Or is it still true, the majority are happy there's just more conversation, more attention being given to people who, have these theories that are kind of outlandish? And all of that with the caveat that there have been times that the government. that pharma companies have, of course, done terrible things intentionally.

I can think right on top of my head of two songs in particular, where I have some pretty clear memories of where I was and the time and place, even though they were songs I’d heard plenty of times before and plenty of times after, and they were the two songs, just as I was pulling into the parking lot for my high school graduation back in June of 1994. Sorry, 1995, goodness! One was, “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows, the other “Welcome To Paradise” by Green Day. And both of them, I think were on D.C. 101, one of the rock stations in the Washington D.C. area that was a little easier of the two main rock stations to pick up in the area based from where I was on the western side of the D.C. area. The other one was 99.1 HFS, and that was like, way over towards Annapolis, which maybe the translator was probably like somewhere in Rockville or Montgomery County or Prince George's or something, but the point being was -- anyway, 101 was easier to pick up so that was normally the rock station I listened to as I was driving in. And yeah, those particular songs, I remember from the playlist of graduation. And that graduation speech itself was not necessarily anything earth-shattering. We didn't have any viral moments, although admittedly those were a lot harder to create in the pre-internet era. The speaker had engagements on NPR at the time and maybe had written a book or two, and my dad actually remembers him more than I do, just for the fact that he could remember him clapping for every graduate, which he thought was, you know, a good thing that he did.

Yeah, in terms of like watching or listening to something you're not supposed to; it was funny, a couple of guys at work who I'm friends with, we were chatting about growing up with conservative Christian parents. And I mean, none of us like rebelled in like, any kind of crazy way, but we talked about like kind of, we all had like the one friend whose house you would go over to and, like, watch the stuff you weren't allowed to watch at home or listen to stuff you weren't allowed to listen to. And, and we all had like music that we would kind of sneakily listen to that our parents wouldn't approve of. And it's funny 'cause theirs were like -- gosh, I can't even remember, but way more intense than mine. Mine was Alanis Morissette. But I have this distinct memory of -- I bought my best friend in sixth grade that album, that Alanis Morissette album, maybe seventh grade, and -- she, 'cause she asked for it, and she had a party. She opened that, whatever. And then after the party, I spent the night, and her mom said, like, after everyone left her mom said, "I don't know who gave you that, but we are returning it!" Like she was so mad, and unfortunately she had already opened it, and I gave it to her, so I'm sure -- well, I know she looked down on me after that, but she couldn't return it, so we listened to it.

There was a quote that I read recently from the comedian Rob Delaney, who, if I'm not mistaken, I think lost a child? I might be, I might be confusing people, but I think he may have lost a child to cancer. And someone asked him about parenthood, and he kind of said, like, you know, the things that are bad about parenthood are all things you've experienced before to some degree. Obviously, maybe not to the extent you experience them when you're in the thick of it but like sleep deprivation, being sick, being impatient, being overwhelmed. Like for most people, you know -- putting aside more intense cases of like postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, all that -- like just the baseline normal hardness, they're all like a variant of things you've experienced. But he said the things that are good are totally new. Like you've never had this little person look at you and need you, you've never seen this little person learn these things, and it's just such an intense thing that's positive, and I try to think about that too. Like yeah, it's hard when you're up every couple hours, it's hard when the baby is crying and colicky and you can't find ways to comfort them in that moment. And it's fleeting, and the, the positive thing like -- this is so small, but the other day, my daughter knocked over her cousin and he started crying and he ran into the other room to narc on her. And my daughter came out unprompted and said, "Hey, I'm sorry." And it was just a small thing, but I was like, "Man. That's so cool." Like, that's so cool that she did that on her own.  And like, I don't know, there's so many moments like that, where you're just like, oh yeah, they're like this fully independent thing. Like, I can't force her. I can try to bestow things upon her, teach her things for sure. But like ultimately she made that choice to come out and say sorry. She could have been like, you know, "Sorry bro.” Like, “You snooze, you lose.” Whatever, like, “You got hurt, it's on you." But she didn't and like, that's so cool and it's just cool to like learn who your kids are. 

I remember a friend -- well, kinda friend of a friend, just a guy that was a part of my friend group a long time ago -- who, I didn't know it at the time, but I found out a little bit later that he was an incessant liar and would just make up stories, constantly. He -- I have no idea how much of this is true -- he told me that he worked at the Van Andel Arena the big, like, arena theater venue in our town, and that he like would set up for concerts and shows and stuff and had to like go up into the rafters and like, hang from a harness, like with a harness on like you know, pulley systems and like move around to like plug in speakers and do all these really cool sorts of setup work things. But like way up high in the facility, which sounded really cool. I -- maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I dunno. But then because of that, he would say things that he saw or like people that he said he would see behind the scenes. And I remember him saying like he saw The Rock ‘cause he was at, I don't know what, maybe this is back in early 2000, so probably like he was a wrestler coming for like WWE or whatever at the arena. And he, and he convinced me, I mean, at the time -- this is like pre-internet days or like, when early in the internet days, where you like didn't have your phone to Google things, and so people tell you stuff and you just believe them unless you have real good evidence for not believing them -- and he told me that The Rock was short like, five feet tall short, and that all of it's just like camera trick angles and stuff that make him look like this huge dude on the screen, but he's actually not that big. And at the time I was like, "Oh, huh, no kidding. That's funny." I didn't watch WWE. I didn't know anything about wrestling at all, or The Rock for that matter. So I had no real basis for questioning that as being fact, and just being like, "Huh, okay, no kidding. Weird. Why wouldn't they just you know, tell him he's too short to be a…

Two days ago, we -- ‘cause we had just moved, so I'm still sorting and putting things away. The kitty was in the living room with us as we were sorting things out. My daughter had put fish on her iPad to try to keep the kitty entertained. And the cat wasn't paying too much attention, so I said, "Birds. Put birds on." So we put birds on, put the iPad on full screen, the birds, hear the chirping. .And all of a sudden, the cat is intensely interested ‘cause she hears the chirping, she sees the birds, and she's looking behind the iPad to see where the birds are. But the intensity on her face and in her eyes... Like she was ready to pounce. But it wasn't real birds, it was just birds on the iPad, but it still kept her in rapt attention for a long time. She just watched and watched. This was Baby. We've done that with Friday. Keeping Friday entertained by having her watch birds on the iPad. They think it's real.

So I do have another example maybe of sort of meeting someone in real life that I knew on social media. So there's somebody who I know who works in an agency that my office works with. I have known who this person was for years. And then when I found them on Bluesky and started following them I thought, "Oh that's like really fun. I can sort of get to know another side of her." So anyway, what I was getting at is a couple weeks ago, I had a work question that I needed to ask her, and I asked if she could like, could we -- I set up a zoom and she would jump on, and I was so excited to finally get a chance to talk to her face to face. I felt, I kinda felt like we had this fun connection because we do have the occasional social media, you know, interactions. And you know I follow her, she follows me, whatever, I felt, I felt like we were buds in a way. And she was strangely stiff and formal. It really -- I was really taken aback. Now, part of it might have been -- I was -- I asked for the meeting and she said, "Sure" and was ready to jump on right away and I actually wasn't prepared, and so I ended up asking my question -- I think I just like, basically, like vomited words at her. I didn't have a well-formed question, I didn't have it clearly laid out, like why I was calling and what the situation was. If I’d taken a little more time, I could have gotten there, but instead I just kinda went in cold. That may have been part of it. But I don't know.  But I did feel kind of deflated about it. I was like, "Oh man, I thought we'd really -- we had this rapport." And I just had none of that when we, when we met. And I thought, and you know, we met on Zoom. And then of course maybe it's also that she -- maybe she was kind of thinking the same thing, but she was thinking about, all right, how do I calibrate -- recalibrate this and make sure that I am professional on this call, and she sort of maybe went too far in the other…

About two months ago, I realized that I had an extra calculator in my backpack. I have no idea how long this calculator has been in there. But, like, I just find it because I, like, realize that I’m taking an exam, and I was like, “Wait a second, this is not my calculator. Like, whose calculator is this?”  So I tell one of my other friends, like, “Hey, I just magically manifested a second calculator, and, like, the only place that I could think of -- like, where it might have came from was your dorm because, like, I sometimes do my math homework there.” And then he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll ask around. I’ll see if anybody’s, like, missing it.”  So, two months pass, and, like, the fact that I have an extra calculator has come up several times. And then two months pass, and I am sitting in physics class, and, like, a mutual friend of the two of us is like, “You know, I’ve been missing my calculator for a really long time, and I can’t seem to find it. Like, it’s my backup calculator, so I don’t really care that much, but, like, it’s just weird. How do you lose, like, a TI-84 Plus CE Python Edition?” And then I’m like, “Wait a second, I’ve had a spare TI-84 Plus CE Python Edition in my backpack for about three months. Does this happen to be yours?” So I pull it out of my backpack, and he opens it, and he checks, like, the line graph settings, and he’s like, “Yeah, that’s my calculator.” And then our mutual friend, who is also sitting at this table, is just like, “Oh my gosh, you two have both been individually complaining about this for, like, three months, and I didn’t connect the dots.” So I thought that that was hilarious.  

The one story that sort of came to my mind when I thought about the radio was about my grandfather. He grew up in [area in Michigan]. And he was born in nineteen tw- -- twenty nine. So, would’ve been growing up in, like, the thirties, forties. And they did not have TV then, so the radio was how they got all of their news, information, sports, music, all of that. So, the channel -- like, the, the radio station that they could get was out of Chicago. And he would listen to the Chicago White Sox baseball games because that’s what he could listen to growing up. So he was always a White Sox fan and not really a Detroit Tigers fan.  But, as he got older, people -- I don’t know how- -- I, I mean, I think he just liked sports in general and people maybe assumed that because he was from the state of Michigan, that he enjoyed -- and, you know, followed the Tigers, or liked the Tigers. And I think that as TV came about, and the broadcasts that were on TV were then the Tigers games, being that he lived in Michigan his entire life, I think he started to follow them a little bit more.  And -- but he had -- like, I have his, like, Tigers ball cap that -- you know, that he wore. And I have a sh- -- a Tigers long sleeve T-shirt of his. And I remember him saying once something about, “Well too bad it isn’t the White Sox.” Like, the team that he actually liked. But I don’t think anybody in our family would’ve given him anything to do with the White Sox, because I think everybody would’ve thought that he was a Tigers fan. But, he did grow up listening to the White Sox broadcasts, and I think was really a true, a true White Sox fan. Which, to me, is unfortunate as a, as a Detroit fan, you know. S- -- it’s kind of unfortunate to be a White Sox fan, but. So I will occasionally root for the White Sox and think of my grandpa as being -- as that being the team that he really did like from, from m- -- childhood or whatever. 

When I was younger, I loved McDonald's so much -- and I still do. I think it's so yummy, but it was anything from, like, my parents would be like, “Hey, look over there,” or would try to distract me as to not see the McDonald’s, which had a play place. And I would just obsess over it. I loved it, I loved it!  So, my parents told me that McDonald's would turn my heart blue. And I was like, “That is terrifying.” And so I knew that if I ate too much McDonald’s and ate it too often, my heart would turn blue. Flash forward -- which I think meant die, like, you would die, right? It was scary. You don't want that to happen.  So, flash forward to -- I'm, like, 23 years old. I'm at a bar, I'm talking to this person. And this guy is like, “Oh yeah” -- like, we're talking about energy drinks for some reason, and he was like, “Oh yeah, my mom told me growing up that if I ever drank an energy drink, my sweat would turn red.” He goes, “So I never even, like, tried to have one without her because I knew that, like, if I sweat red, she would totally be able to tell that I had an energy drink.” And it was just really fun to me because for the first time in my life, I thought critically and was like, “Oh my gosh, I don't think McDonald's turns your heart blue, actually.”