Author: Georgia Bailey

“Last blog of junior year?? No way!” “Way.” Anyway I’m going to start off this blog with this amazing thing I did to my brother when I was about 12. Little backstory, my brother had this really old really crappy android. I can’t remember what type it was but it was bad. Anyway, I, being the amazing little sister I am, decided to do something about it. I searched and searched until finally I found the perfect gift for him. I wrapped it up and gave it to him. My exact words to him were, “Thomas I know you’ve been needing a new phone and I’ve been saving up my money so here you go.” and he got really excited. He had this huge smile on his face as he ripped open the wrapping paper to find a brand new Samsung phone. He was so happy and hugged me. I told him to open the box. He opened it. His smile faded. It was a rock.

On a side note, I have no idea what I’m going to write about for the exam for short fiction. I thought of something and then I remembered we’re in short fiction not short non fiction. Oopsies. Anyway I have these window planters on the front of my house and since I moved in there almost two years ago, they’ve been filled with dry dead plants. It looks nasty. I decided to do something about that. I planted rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, and lavender in them. As I was clearing out the dead plants I found a screw?? What?? Anyway, next I was going to clear out a section of my front yard full of weeds and more dead plants. I quit after about 5-10 minutes when I saw multiple black widows. I’ll leave the rest for my mom to deal with. Also, I planted this plant on easter. I think it was a flower but I can’t remember for the life of me what type. It’s growing. I replanted it into a bigger pot this past weekend. I hope it doesn’t die. I’ll update the plant situation in my first blog next year. Stay tuned.

Oh also, I took the AP English exam today and I get time and a half due to accommodations for lots of things. Anyway I divided up the time I had to write each of the three essays and it was 67 minutes. The first essay took 61 minutes to write, the second took me 23, and the third, 19. I think I made a 1.

P.S. Cooper if you’re reading this, your bag kind of reminds me of Indiana Jones’s bag.

“I wear yellow on Thursdays.”

As many of you know (hopefully), I have type 1 diabetes. Today, I will tell a story of what Neon said to me at Sarah senior showcase. But first, a short explanation so you don’t mix up the different types of diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes, aka juvenile diabetes, usually occurs when you are a child. Hence the nickname, juvenile diabetes. Man I really want to make a joke but I don’t think Dr A would let me post it so I’ll slightly tell it. Dream. Alright, t1d occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas causing it to not make insulin. From my understanding (i’ve had t1d for over 8 years you can trust me) sometimes the immune system doesn’t kill all of the insulin cells so your body will make little to no insulin. Depending on the amount of living insulin cells. T1d is permanent and there is no cure. I remember when I was first diagnosed on January 29, 2016, I was told not to worry because there would be a cure in about four years. Those four years came and went with no cure. Then another four years came and went without a cure. Now I’m on the next four years lol. Anyway, t1d is usually genetic meaning it runs in the family. You can also get sick and basically your immune system gets confused and thinks your insulin cells are bad. Neither of those happened for me. It was just a fluke that I got t1d. Your diet and exercise habits cannot at all whatsoever cause you to have type 1 diabetes. Now onto type 2 diabetes.

I don’t know much about type 2 diabetes but I’ll do my best to explain it. Basically (from my understanding but I dont have the disease so take what I’m saying with about 4.2oz of salt) type 2 diabetes usually occurs in adulthood from poor diet and exercise. This is not always the case. Sometimes you can be the healthiest person in the world and still develop type 2 diabetes because it can also be a genetic factor (meaning it runs in the family). It is also not permanent. WIth proper dieting and exercise, you can get rid of it.

A lot of diabetics (mainly t1) complain that t1 and t2 should have different names because of how different they are. They claim that they are two completely different diseases and are not at all similar. I agree and disagree at the same time. Both types are in the endocrine family and they both have to do with your pancreas. I do agree that the names are too similar and should be different. I’ve talked to a lot of type 2 diabetics and when they find out i have t1, they’re like “hey i have diabetes!” When I ask them which type, they say they don’t know. In my experience, if you don’t know what type of diabetes you have, you’re usually type 2. Ok, enough with the explanations and onto the story.

I was at Sarah’s senior showcase and Neon was eating some sort of cookie. I asked them what it tasted like because I had never had one before. They looked at me and said, “diabetes.” I looked at them with a surprised look on my face as their eyes widened in horror and they started apologizing. To be fair, it was really funny. We both started laughing and they fell to the floor because they were laughing so hard.

Fun Fact: There is also a kind of diabetes called type 1.5 diabetes. This occurs when an adult is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. There’s type 3 diabetes which is linked to Alzheimer’s or something. I don’t really know. I mainly only know about t1.

This one’s a little long but oh well.

1. I was like 2 and my dad took me with him to Lowe’s and we were in the aisle with those drawers filled with the fun designed door knobs and whenever we were in that aisle, I would always look at the doorknobs. Anyway, one of the workers went up to help my dad and they started talking and my dad walked out of the aisle WITHOUT ME while I was looking at the doorknobs, distracted. Side note, WHO LEAVES THEIR TWO YEAR OLD ALONE IN A STORE?? Ya I get he only went a few aisles down but when your kid is that age they can easily wander off and get kidnapped. I did half of that. Let’s say I was in aisle D when I noticed my dad was gone. I started calmly freaking out and walked to aisle E. He wasn’t there. Then, I walked to aisle C and then B. He wasn’t there. I had just turned around to go back further the other way when this nice lady who worked there was like “Hey sweetie, are you lost?” and I nodded my head. She took me to the customer service desk and asked me what color shirt and pants my dad was wearing and then she made the announcement, “Will a father wearing a green shirt and tan shorts please come to the customer service desk. Your daughter is here.” Like five minutes later my dad came. He was mad at me for wandering off. I told him I didn’t know where he went and he said, “You could have just stayed there. I was coming back.” HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT??? I WAS TWO
2. I was like 2-3 and I was in my bathroom with the door shut and locked. I heard my dad coming up the stairs so I unlocked the door. He heard the click and asked me why I just locked the door. I told him I didn’t and I had unlocked it. He said, “No you didn’t. That was the sound of the door locking not unlocking.” They both sound very similar. I was grounded.
3. When I was in prek 4, I always had to stay for like two hours after school before my dad could pick me up. Both my parents worked late and whoever got off first picked my brother and me up. It was usually my dad. Anywho whenever he picked me up, he would ask me what color I got on. We had a color system, green, yellow, and red, to represent our behavior. My teachers hated me so I was always on red. Whenever he picked me up he would ask me what color I got on and I’d tell him red and then he would spank me. I started lying. One day he caught on and had the teachers give him notes telling him what color I was on. One day I decided to not lie and tell the truth. I told him I got on red. He was like, “really? lets go see I don’t believe you.” I guess he didn’t get the note that day because we walked to my classroom to see what color I was on. The teachers had already set all the cards to green by then and left. He saw I was on green (so was everyone else) and grounded me. When we got home he spanked me. I tried telling him that the teachers must have already reset the cards but he didn’t believe me because they usually never reset them that early.
4. I talked about this in one of my very first blogs. I’ll shorten it. We were re doing our driveway and my brother and I were playing in the front yard. My dad said my brother had to watch me. Thomas dug a hole and put me in it. I couldn’t get out. He went inside and left me there. My dad came to the front yard like 10 minutes later and saw me. He grounded me for being in the front yard by myself which I wasn’t allowed to do. I tried telling him what Thomas did but he didn’t care.
5. One time my dad had to take me with him to the next state over for his dr appt. We left the house a bit late so I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast. Side note: when I’m hungry I get really nauseous. We were a few blocks away from the hospital where his appt was and I threw up in the car. He grounded me for puking??? I was like two!!! I think. Yes I was two. This was a few months after we had moved to Mississippi.
6. One time my dad asked me a question and he didn’t like how I answered it so he grounded me. This actually happened a couple of times.
7. When I was in pre-k4 my dad said if I came home with food on my shirt he would ground me. I was like 3-4, of course I was going to get food on my shirt. Low and behold, I’d come home with food on my shirt and he would ground me.
8. Ok this last one isn’t a stupid reason why I was grounded but it’s kinda funny. The summer before sixth grade my mom grounded me from my electronics (my iPad, her iPad, the TV, her computer, etc.) “until further notice” and she said if I ever asked her about it, she would sell my iPad. I never asked her about it. She forgot I was grounded. She never ungrounded me. I’m still grounded. After a couple of months I slowly started using my iPad again and she didn’t say anything so I just went back to using everything. I reminded her about this last year and her response was something about her just thinking I got sick of the internet or something. So in short, I’ve been grounded for about six years all because my mom forgot to unground me. Very fun.

I have absolutely no idea what to write about. Usually I have some weird story to tell but this time I have nothing. For the past hour and a half I’ve been re-learning how to use powerpoint because the last time I used it was when I was in 4th grade and now I have to use powerpoint to make a presentation for my Chinese class for my final exam. 

Oh my god I just thought of something I did when I was younger. I was like two years old and I had just seen Mary Poppins so I grabbed my little spiderman umbrella and ran to the backyard where my mom had built this table. I climbed on the table, walked to the edge, opened my umbrella, stood there for about 5-10 minutes, climbed down, and went back inside. I was going to jump off the table and float down with my umbrella like how Mary Poppins did but I was too scared and chickened out.

Do yall remember those cringy POV videos people used to post on tiktok in like 2019-2020. They’d be about something like “when you turn 16 the government gives you an adjective and that’s how you have to act for the rest of your life but now you’re 17 and you don’t have one so you pretend you have one so the government won’t kill you” or something like that. I was scrolling through reels the other day and I saw one of those that someone had reposted from tiktok.

I literally have no idea what my short story is going to be about but I do, however, know that whatever it’s about, it will be trash. For that, I apologize in advance. Maybe I’ll write a story but some of the character lines are lines from songs. I don’t know. If y’all wanna use that idea, go for it. Oh god my back hurts.

At this point I’m just rambling. I do that a lot. Earlier today my brother and I were talking and I said he and I should find new land, create our own empire and anyone who abuses a dog should be punished with wet dog food. Can you even imagine how awful that would be?? Like wet dog food already stinks. I bet it would taste awful if it got in your mouth while being suffocated. I heard a statistic years ago that suffocation was one of the worst ways to die.

That reminds me of this one time in 5th grade I went with my mom to get my hair done because it was my birthday and one of her friends recommended this lady who worked at her hair salon in her house. It was so weird. She was weird. I had really long hair that was about 4-5 inches past my shoulders and I cut it all off to my chin and got highlights. I wanted blonde highlights but the lady messed up my hair and they turned out some shade of orange. It still looked good because of the shade my hair was back then but it wasn’t what I wanted. My mom also wanted highlights and the lady was like “ohh nooo you should let me dye your hair orange!” WHAT?? ORANGE?? Anyway my mom kept telling the lady no but the lady kept pestering my mom so my mom caved. It looked so bad. It was like a yellowish mandarin orange. My mom saw it and had this look on her face that obviously said she hated it and the hairdresser lady kept going on and on about how good it looked and even then she said if in a few days my mom didn’t like it anymore she could come back and she would fix my moms hair for $200. I kid you not she actually said that. We never went back there.

Ok well, I’ve rambled enough. Until next time.

I remember one day in first grade, I went to spend the night at my best friend Dannica’s house for her birthday. I remember riding in the backseat of her moms car with her going to her house. We got there and celebrated. We watched Wreck It Ralph while eating pizza and jumping on her litter exercise trampoline. We both slept in her bed together that night. I’m pretty sure it was a king size bed. I remember she was about to fall asleep and she let me continue using her iPad before I fell asleep. I ended up falling asleep while using her iPad. In the morning her mom came to wake us up because we had to go to church. We were going to meet my parents there so I could go back home with them. The only problem was that Dannica didn’t want to get out of bed. She was being really stubborn. She just kept sleeping. Her mom couldn’t wake her up so I tried to. It didn’t work so her mom went to the bathroom and got a hot wet face cloth and draped it over Dannica’s face. That ended up working when the cloth got cold. When we got to church, dannica’s mom gave her her ADHD pill in the car before we got out. Long story short, we went to church and we managed to convince my parents to let me stay with Dannica for the rest of the day. Or for another night. I can’t remember which. When we got back in Dannica’s moms car after church, it was about to start raining. Mrs Mary, Dannica’s mom, kept an umbrella in the backseat. Dannica grabbed the umbrella, looked at me and said, “You know, it’s bad luck to open an umbrella inside.” She then proceeded to open this umbrella in the backseat of the car as her mom was trying to drive out of the parking lot. Now this wasn’t some small or medium size umbrella. It was a big one enough to fit two big beefy men. Of course, there was a lot of yelling and laughter before the umbrella got closed but it was still fun.

Also, when yall were younger and yall went on long drives and watched movies, how did yall watch the movie? I remember my dad got a new car when I was in kindergarten and with his old car, there was a little screen on the dashboard and you could put a DVD in the music CD slot and play a movie that was. My mom also every once in a while plugged her iPhone 4s into the car via the charger and played Netflix that way. In my dads new car, he does still have that screen thing but it doesn’t play movies. I don’t think. I’m pretty sure we’ve tried it and it didn’t work. Anyway, how we watched movies in the new car was we had this really old portable DVD player that I’m pretty sure my mom got when she still lived in Canada. She immigrated here in 1997. Side story: I actually remember going to the court house with my mom when she got sworn in as a US citizen. I was 2 years old.

There are a couple movies/shows out there that I’m convinced only I’ve watched. For example (here comes the list):

Kubo and the Two Strings

I feel like no one has seen this. It came out in 2016 and I watched it in either 2018 or 2019. My brother was like “Hey Georgia, wanna watch a movie about two strings?” I was so confused. Anyway, it was a good movie.

Wonder Pets

Again, I’m convinced no one has seen this. I never watched it on any streaming service but I did go to the Long Beach public library and check out a DVD copy of like five of the episodes. “The phone. The phone is ringing. There’s an animal in trouble. There’s an animal in trouble.”

Oswald

I swear to god I’ve brought up this show so many times and no one has heard of it. I had a couple of the episodes on DVD when I was younger and I’m pretty sure I still have it. One of the episodes involved Oswald putting too many popcorn seeds in the popcorn popper thingy and then too much soap in the pool outside and he went to go up the stairs to get popcorn but the popcorn was like flooding down the stairs and then bubbles from the pool were like flooding up the stairs and he got somehow trapped on the stairs. I remember being like five and seeing that and being like, “why can’t he just walk through the bubbles?”

Pingu

Ok I feel like people have probably seen this one considering it was a little bit popular on social media a while ago. This was like my favorite show as a kid. That and Garfield.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Ok I have no idea if people have heard of Wallace and Gromit but if you haven’t, you are uncultured and should be locked up (in my opinion). I had this, again, on DVD and both my brother and I watched it multiple times. I remember when we got it I was like 3 so my brother was 6. I was talking with him about this episode a couple months ago and he told me it scared him and after watching this show he wouldn’t go near rabbits again. I thought that was really funny considering I was three years younger than him when we both saw it and I wasn’t scared. Pretty much all of the Wallace and Gromit series was my entire childhood.

The Great Mouse Detective

THIS WAS AMAZING YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT. I remember the scene where the dad gets kidnapped scared me and so did the bat. That bat really FREAKED me out.

Garfield and Friends

I forking loved this series. 10/10 definitely my favorite repeat series. That and the original seasons of The Garfield Show.

Dexter’s Laboratory

I feel like people might have seen this one but I’ve never heard people talk about it. Like ever.

The Yogi Bear Shoe (1961)

I haven’t ever heard anyone talk about this show. I lived for this series when I was like three. The sound Yogi made when he ate a sandwich always made me want a sandwich. Now I want a sandwich.

When I was younger, I didn’t have very many friends. My parents were also very busy people. We had a TV but I didn’t use it. I never really cared for watching TV. I still don’t. When I was five, my parents got my brother and I an xbox 360 for christmas. I also got an iPad. My brother, Thomas, was always on the xbox and would never let me play games with him. I never got a chance to use it. Instead of playing video games or watching TV, I went to the backyard and played with the dogs and a soccer ball. When we first moved to the Gulf Coast from Colorado in 2008, my mom built my brother and me a sandbox. If you were standing on the back porch looking at the yard, it was in the back right corner of the yard. Eventually my mom moved it to the back left corner of the yard as there was a giant oak tree in the neighbors yard that gave us a shaded area. She moved an entire pile of sand one wheelbarrow at a time. I remember watching her doing that while I was playing with the dogs. When the sandbox got moved, a hammock was put in going across the sand. I loved playing in the hammock and swinging back and forth in it. Whenever my mom got the chance, she’d bring me down the street to the park so I could play.

One of my favorite things to do, however, was look out the windows. We lived in a two story house and I’d always stand on the stairs in the middle and look out the window. I would stand there for hours watching the shadows of the leaves move and the birds building their nests. I’d watch as the squirrels searched for acorns and how bees would land on flowers. My favorite part about this was watching the shadows of the clouds on the ground slowly moving and how the shadows from the oak trees would slowly shift from one side to the other as the sun moved.

The stairwell window wasn’t the only one I looked out. I had two windows in my room that I loved to gaze out of. My bed was in front of one of them and I’d sit on my bed for hours staring out into the neighborhood. My dresser was in front of the other window and I’d climb on top of it to watch the cars drive by.

Another window I loved staring out of was the window in my bathroom. It overlooked the neighbors garden and pool. She had so many beautiful flowers blooming in the spring and summer. There were always bees buzzing around her backyard. I remember seeing the side of her house from that window. She had curtains on all of her windows that you couldn’t see through. The only thing you could see was a couch pressed against one window in the top right corner of her house. When it would rain I would look out at her garden and listen to the sound of the droplets pattering against the metal roof of her car port.

I loved looking out the windows so much because it was like time had stopped. Everything was peaceful and quiet. The only things you could hear were the birds singing and the occasional car driving by. To this day I still love looking out windows wherever I go. The only difference is nothing is ever as bright or as colorful as it was when I was younger.

As said in the title, Chinese history fascinates me.

China was ruled under a monarchy up until 12 February 1912 when a group of revolutionists in southern China led a successful revolt against the Qing Dynasty. The monarchy originally began around 2070 BC when Yu the Great established the Xia dynasty. China has had a total of 83 dynasties and about 559 emperors and kings.

The first dynasty in China was the Xia Dynasty and the very first emperor in China is said to have been Yu the Great. It’s also said he is one of the very few Chinese monarchs who were honored with the epithet “the Great”.

The very last monarch in China was Emperor Puyi of the Qing Dynasty. He ruled between 1908-1912 when China’s monarchy was overthrown. Ironically enough, he was only six years old when the monarchy was overthrown. He was born on February 7, 1906 and started his rule on December 2, 1908. When the monarchy was overthrown, he was not killed like you may think. As he got older, he tried to fight back for control over China but did not succeed. From my understanding, he gained control over some parts of China but later, that was taken from him. He also received help from Japan to try to gain control over China at one point.

At one point in time, China had their first and only female emperor, Wu Zhao (624-705). She was also known as Empress Wu Zetian. She ruled as the “Holy and Divine Emperor” of the Second Zhou Dynasty for 15 years. She had a reputation of being one of the most cruel rulers in China’s history. At the age of 14, she was chosen to become a concubine for Emperor Taizong. While being his concubine, she started having an affair with his favorite son who later became Emperor Gaozong. When Emperor Taizong died, she was sent to live as a nun, however, seeing as she had connections with the new Emperor, Emperor Gaozong, she returned to the palace and became empress consort. People have said that Wu Zetian killed her own daughter and blamed the former empress for her death, so Wu Zetian could take her spot. When Emperor Gaozong died, Wu Zetian forced her sons away from the throne and declared herself as Empress Regnant. While she ruled, she had several male concubines and established an office to maintain them all. Wu Zetian was also known for being a feminist, remarkable leader, and a strong military commander. She left behind a legacy as one of the greatest emperors in all of Chinese history. Towards the end of her ruling, her power began to slip as she began to be more paranoid and spent more time with her young lovers (mainly the Zhang brothers) rather than ruling China. Her paranoia resulted in a purge of her administration and she banished or executed anyone she became suspicious of. Her rule really started to decline as she became addicted to different types of aphrodisiacs. Eventually, court officials got sick of her behavior and murdered the Zhang brothers. She was forced to abdicate the throne so her son, Zhongzong, and his wife, Wei, could ascend to the throne. By the time Zhongzong and his wife ascended the throne, Wu Zetian was in poor health and died about a year later. Wu Zetian was buried with Emperor Gaozong in a tomb in Qian County, Shanxi Province. To follow tradition, a huge stele was built outside of the grave, but the marker remained blank. Today, Empress We Zetian is considered one of China’s greatest rulers and her character has appeared in many Chinese dramas including Women of the Tang Dynasty (2013) which starred actress Hui Tinghong as Wu Zetian.

To this day, there are still living heirs to the Chinese throne.

For this week’s blog, I thought I’d talk about the Chinese Prince of Lan Ling, Gao Changgong. But before I do, I want to give you a little bit of side information that is important.

Thousands of years ago in ancient China, beauty was more important for men than it was for women. Men wanted to be pale, slender, and tall. They wore light shades of foundation and put on lipstick. They also had very long hair. People didn’t cut their hair back then, because bodies, skin, and hair are given to them by their parents. Because of this, they must not be damaged. Cutting hair was seen as disrespectful to parents and barbaric. Because of this, it became a punishment reserved for extreme crimes. Now onto the story

There was once a man in China who was so handsome, he felt self conscious. He was the fourth son of Gao Cheng who was the elder brother of the emperor of Northern Qi, making him a prince of Northern Qi. He was given the name Prince Lan Ling as his land was known as Lan Ling. He was also a powerful general of Northern Qi. He worried that his feminine looking beauty wouldn’t intimidate his enemies so he would wear a mask into battle to seem more fierce.

The emperor at the time happened to be Gao Changgongs’s cousin, Gao Wei. Gao Wei was constantly worried that his cousin, Gao Changgong, would overthrow him as emperor so one day he sent a cup of poisoned wine to Gao Changgong, which led to his death. About four years after his death, having lost one of its greatest generals, Northern Qi was destroyed by Northern Zhou which resulted in all of the members of the Gao royal family being brutally slaughtered. In a roundabout way, Gao Wei signed his own death certificate when he killed Gao Changgong.

Fun facts: 

1. Prince Gao Changgong appears in a dramatized TV series called Prince of Lan Ling. It’s most likely called this as he ruled in LanLing county.
2. Prince Gao Changgong also appears in another TV series called Princess of LanLing
3. I have heard Prince Gao Changgong appeared in the video game Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I don’t know if it’s true or not.
4. Also, I’m pretty sure that none of the historical pictures of Prince Gao Changgong survived to the present day.

More random stories 🙂

1. My brother ripped his pants at my 10th birthday party. I had my party at Altitude (trampoline park) and my brother decided to wear khaki shorts. This is how the conversation between my mom and brother went when she saw what he was wearing…

Mom: Ohhhh Thomas you better go change into something more flexible. Those are going to rip

Thomas: No, it’s fine.

Mom: Ok well at least bring an extra pair of shorts in case.

Thomas: No mom! I’m not doing that, I told you it’s fine!

We leave for my party. About 30-45 minutes in, he ripped his pants. My dad took him across the street to WalMart and got him a new pair of pants.

2. One time when I was in 7th grade I was dying my hair pink and my dog was in the bathroom with me and as I was applying the dye, it dripped onto her shoulder. After that I rubbed more in so she had an entirely pink shoulder instead of one spot. She ROCKED that look lol.

3. One time when I was like 2 or 3 I took my moms eyeshadow and painted my stomach blue with it. I was so proud of myself.

4. When I was younger I used to dress the dogs in my clothes.

5. Our family friend, Deacon Rick, (yes, he’s a deacon) flicked holy water at me one time when I was like 5 and I hissed at his and he looked at my parents and said, “at least she didn’t sizzle”

6. One time when I was nine I took my house robe, put it on a hanger, taped a sheet of paper(with a face drawn on it) onto the hanger, somehow put my leggings in the robe making it look like the robe had legs, also somehow putting shoes on the leggings making it look like feet, then going to the second story bathroom window and reeling the “person” outside to the first floor window in the family room where my family was.

7. One time (before the house robe incident) I took a little fairy toy of mine and tied some sewing thread to it, hung it out the second story bathroom window, and banged it against the first floor living room window where my brother was. He screamed.

8. When I was in kindergarten I used to cut my hair a lot. The teacher would send me home with my hair in a bag, in my bookbag. My mom still has all of the hair.

9. My brother said this to me when he told me about when I was learning to walk, “You know those toys where it’s a little doll on a stand and you pull the string and it stands up and if you let the string go a little it starts to droop and then fall? Oh yeah, your head was magnetized to the ground.”