Repeat Episode Lying Daisy

Re-sharing this episode because it’s one of those stories that just hits—early signs of perfectionism, chaos, and a few questionable childhood decisions. If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve heard it before… it might hit differently this time.

Taking some time to focus on MAY-HEM! Will be back next week with a banger!

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You know you hear that music and you know what it means. It means I haven't learned how to change the music. Nobody's offered to record my intro song, and we're still here, we're still kicking it. It's another episode of Claire Bear the podcast with your host, Claire. Are you all ready? We're gonna hop right into some wild stories. After I do a rant, can I do a rant each episode? I really want to rant. I want to rant it out right now. You know how last week I was like, puppies and butterflies, and follow your dreams and your hearts. It doesn't matter. Money doesn't bring you joy, your life passions do. Then my estrogen crashed, and it's today, and somebody decided when I finally had the energy to get on this lovely podcast to mow their lawn. Not today, Tuesday, not today. But here I am, I'm recording. So I'm sorry about your bad luck, the person with my voodoo doll. I'm still alive. So yesterday I was waking up, I was starting my week. I was pretending I was a Broadway singer, singing to the musical of six, and I like to sing that song Unbreakable, and I was belting it out for probably the sixth time in my car because I had a turnaround, I forgot something back in my car, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And really turned it up, sang into probably the tweezers that I have in my console. And a man next to me looked over at my musical performance from my Subaru, and he just gave me a thumbs up. So I'm going to hang on to that image, just hang on to that cheerful moment of my life, and use it to propel me during this week. I feel like when we get into April, it's like pre-Easter, post-Easter, then boom, it's gonna be May. May is, I feel like the only thing that's missing in May is why don't we just start lighting up our houses, giving each other gifts? We have so many events to go to, so many events that aren't even events. It's like plant a tree day, earth day. We have to plant a tree. I love the earth, but again, we're really stretching for some holidays during the springtime. The late spring kind of gets desperate for holidays. It's like, come paper mache day. I don't want to do that. I don't want to go cheer on the paper mache competition. It's so much. Can we just keep it to like the end of the year? You get a certificate, we pat on the back, we talk about your band performance, and we move right along because it's getting real intense. And then, and I'm not blaming you teachers, I'm blaming some sort of higher power that creates these school schedules. Because I know if it was up to you, the normal ones, we wouldn't have half days. The nine to eleven, it's gotta stop. Somebody draw the line. It's hard for you to just drive in, pack your teacher bags, because you all have seven. Then we have to wake up our kid. They come home at 11. We still have to feed them lunch, and I'm acting like I'm not really liking to parent. I am. It's just, I want it to be crisp, concise, and I need to stop with all the days. Do not do drugs week. Literally, my son last week had kindness week. Is that not a given, especially at a private Christian school? Listen, don't talk to school. I love it. I love it. I'm just saying, I think teachers, chime in. It would just be really great if we could combine all of those half days that are like awards day, hug your teacher day, clean out your locker day. Put all of those halves and make it one whole and then skip the rest of the halves. I just think that's a more efficient use of our time. And you can have your crazy socks and your crazy hair. That's not like it's bowling day. We don't own bowling things. We don't own bowling shoes. We don't only own a bowling ball. It and I truly don't know a lot of people that own bowling things. I don't know any 12-year-olds that are in bowling leagues. I'm sure it's a great sport. I love for my child to sample it, but I can't have a theme day that's bowling day or wear chartreuse day or dress like an 1800s Victorian era person that you can't find on the internet day. It's too much. It's too much. I like a theme party, but again, I feel like after April, it's just a free-for-all of all the made-up holidays and all the made-up days. I don't want to have tweezer day. I don't want to have shrub day. I don't want to have light bulb day. I'm just like around my room saying all the days that they have come up with. But those are things. Those are actual things that I've lived through. And I'm telling you right now, I think the world would be so much happier if we were more efficient with our themes and our half days and just calm down May is what I'm calling for. I'm calling for a calm down May. They call it May a get in or something. I don't know. I'm not calling it that because I'm manifesting naps and serene sounds and moving all of the half days to one and then abruptly school ends and we're eating popsicles. That sounds ideal. No more of your fig leaf on your fro day. I don't know. I'm just making things up because that seems to be like what is happening right now. Children of the 80s and 90s, chime in here. If we told our moms and dads, or whoever was raising us, we're inclusive here at the Claire Bear podcast, if we were like, hey, it's golden bowl day. We have to have a golden bowl. It has to be this size and this circumference, it has to hold this many fortune cookies. So it's golden bowl, so we need to do it for tomorrow. My mom would laugh in my face. I actually would be surprised if I even brought that information to her attention. I would have to go scrounging in an old dump somewhere, which fortunately there was behind my house, but I would literally have to figure something out because asking her would not be an option. So if we could just kind of dial it back as a collective to get back to normal of not asking our moms about Golden Bull Day, that's just, it's beyond. And I'm not blaming y'all teachers. You guys hold it down. You're literally responsible for the next generation of our lives and our futures. So I'm not saying anything about you, but I know there's some magical AI universe administration team that is thinking Golden Bull Day is appropriate. And I want to tell whoever that is, whoever is on the other side of making these calendars and ideas go viral, stop. Just stop. Moms everywhere would like you to stop. And I know there's a minority mom group out there that's just waiting with their cricket, just like, what can I make and laminate and bedazzle? Stop. The other moms, you're making us tired and we don't have any more estrogen to keep up. And you can do that. And we will give you a pat on the back. We will give you a trophy. We will sing your praises at a PTA meeting. I don't know what else we can do, but if you don't mind creating some system where participation is optional and we can normalize being normal again. Thank you, love it, bye, and rant. But that brings me to my next segment, which is the 80s and the 90s. Just think about it. Oh, the glamorous 80s and 90s. We all had box televisions. Some had 21 channels, if you were lucky, sitting on a floor of a shag carpet. There was some sort of tapestry hanging on the walls, velvet with running horses. The couch was velvet, maybe had some holes in it, covered by a homemade Afghan. Is that what we call it? You know, a big old blanket. It was glorious. Linoleum tables and counters and chairs and floors. I had a burleson, well, I didn't. My parents had like that burleson buffet. We put the record player right in there because there were no cassettes, my friends. We didn't know what anybody else was doing, what was going on behind closed doors in their house. There was no record unless your dad had a Nikon F1 and was pointing it where the sun doesn't shine. Then you knew if you were the film developer, but nobody was blasting about their vacations because very few people were taking them. Interest rates were high, bike rides were long. Oh, the glorious 80s. Mary Lou Retton, Reagan, sweatbands, home workouts, big bird, fragile rock. Can you smell the hamburger helper cooking right now? Oh, the 80s. I loved it. And I secretly, I think it took me a while to get removed from it and then reminisce, but I loved being poor in the 80s. The food, dynamite. Before they were putting NGOs in all of the food, they sampled with the food that I got as a little girl, such as Vienna sausages, craft singles, which in my house we called garbage cheese. Nobody knows the story of why we call it that, but still today it's called garbage cheese. Probably because it's made of garbage. Not actual garbage, but garbage ingredients. So we had garbage cheese, Vienna sausages. What else? Ooh, remember TV dinners? Now they weren't the microwaveable things because back in the day a lot of people didn't have microwaves, myself included. We didn't even have a VCR. This is how much time has changed in the last 50 years. It's kind of amazing, but I also did just say 50 years. Oh god. But a TV tray. Remember, you would they had the foil cover and you would put them in the oven. And if you were rich, if you were a rich family, you had like trays, like those tables, they were wooden. I saw them at a hardware store recently, and I was just like, man, when this podcast goes big, I'm getting me one of those wooden tables to break out. And even better, if your family was fancy and organized, they had a stand for them that rolled to like the back of the couch. Oh, goals. It's a little scary to think what our kids will be saying about their childhood. I hope not a lot changes in the next 50 years. Should we just go back in time, shut down the internet? I were there even faxes in like 1985? I have no clue. But that's where the story begins. We're going to start into some funny funny stories. 85. Slip dresses belonging to my mom that were tattered and torn and the wrong color. Fisher Price heels on the feetsies. I had a fire mullet haircut. For some reason, I think my mom was just like overwhelmed with two daughters. She gave us boy haircuts. So I was full-blown mullet. My sister had a nice bowl. She had thick hair, so her bowl cut was poppin'. And I've had, I have kind of fine, thin hair, so I had a nice mullet. And I think I got it done at like a beauty college. If there is one in Pueblo, I'm not sure if that exists. It wasn't like a Paul Mitchell school or anything of the sorts. It was called beauty college, I'm pretty sure. And I didn't, I don't even know that Pueblo has one, but they had to have had one because we had hairdressers. How are they getting certified? Again, it was the 80s. We didn't ask questions, we just did the darn thing. But I think my mullet haircut that they like blow dry it back, round brush it, kind of feathered it. Do you guys remember feathering? Cost a whole $6. Now with inflation and whatever, I don't know what that's adjusted in today's money, but $6 for a fire mullet haircut. Name a better thing in life. You can't because that mullet haircut looked great for that one day. Because remember in the 80s and 90s when you would get your hair done, they would quaff pick every perfect hair strand on your head would be so perfect. Boom, you'd wash it. You now look like you cut it yourself. Which a lot of the times it did look like I cut my hair myself. Which a lot of the times, even today, it looks like I uh cut my hair myself. Oh well. So it's 1985. I'm running around my house. We've got sunflowers, real sunflowers, rocking and rolling in the backyard next to the house. They produced real life sunflower seeds. How crazy is that? We had a swing set in the backyard. We'd often run around without our clothes on. Again, don't ask me what was happening. We had three dogs, Dixie, Shelly, and Silver. Silver, my dad claims was like a human dog and would go and break into other people's outside freezers and steal pies and bring them back, and my dad would actually eat them. Again, my dad's a character. I love him. I love him so much, but did wild things. Could that story be made up? Yeah. If you go back and do your research on other episodes, 100% of that story could be made up, but I like it, and so I'm going to tell it. So it's the fabulous 80s, and this is where the stories begin. And I can say for certainty that these stories happen because they are of my memory. So, life is good. I'm starting kindergarten. I went to a preschool called Wii 3 Preschool. It was great. I don't remember a whole lot about it except that we wore green shirts with yellow writing and did a lot of singing. And I don't know if that's where my talents come from, but it had to have come somewhere. And to whoever taught me how to sing at Wii 3, I salute you, Mr. or Mrs. Let's get our kindergarten on. Now, kindergarten in my hometown had two different segments. You either went to morning or afternoon. Why I'm telling you this fun fact, I truly do not know because it really doesn't matter with the story, but I do like a half day for kindergarten because it was kind of like, why don't you sample this whole K through 12 thing out? You know, you have another 11 years to go, so we're going to do you a little favor and offer you just a sample before we just throw you to the wolves and make you stay in this school job for all day, every day. Actually, I love school, but here we are. We are in Sunset Park Elementary School, Pueblo, Colorado, home of the yearlings. Fun fact, I still know the school song, but because I told you I wouldn't sing into this microphone anymore, I won't sing it to you. Maybe I'll put it on the socials and you can hear me do. Sunset Park. Okay, sorry. Sorry, sorry. And I felt like I was called to the big leagues, graduated from preschool, up to kindergarten, the first in my family to go to school, like elementary school at this point. They had gone to school, but you know what I mean? Like I'm the first kid trying to blaze trails, y'all. So here I am at kindergarten and I'm just trying to figure things out. And as we are playing on the playground, because every morning or afternoon, whichever segment I was in, they would have us play in their little playground just for kindergartners. And then the fifth graders would come down, it was called kindergarten patrol, and they would watch us and they would be like, How old are you? And I would be like, six. And they were like, You said sex. Fifth graders are so weird like that. And I was like, I don't know what sex is. So we're just playing around, and one apparent day, we didn't get let in early enough. And this student who I end up going to all of the schools with, K through 12, he was rowdy. He's also the smartest person I know. He kind of got bored with school. I wish I could say more, but without saying more, I'm sure you kind of understand. He was also extremely tall, a very tall kid. He was always much larger than the rest of us. And that's saying something too, because you have to keep in mind I was much smaller than the average student. So he was very tall. It was almost like he was taller than the fifth graders that were coming to tell us about the word sex, okay? So one day he decided that we weren't getting let in soon enough. And he was always kind of doing things that were shock factor. And he punched the window. You know, those like big steel doors, and you had that tiny window that you would look through. Yeah, he punched his fist through it. And my teacher, and this was back in the 80s, remember, so you could put your hands on a suit and wouldn't go viral, dragged him to the office, to the principal's office by his ear. And I was like, whoa, Nelly, this is getting real, y'all. I think the punching of the window had to have happened pretty early on in the year. I think a lot of other things did too, because we were all just trying to figure out how to do this school thing. It had to have been the beginning part of the year because nobody knew who I was at this point in time. And during the morning announcements, the teacher had said, if you want to be in Daisies, which is a junior version or a younger version of Girl Scouts, stay after school. So I must have been in the late afternoon, it doesn't matter. Stay after school. That's all you need to know. I don't know why I go off in these side tangents with a mic in my face, but here we are. So I thought to myself, wow, Daisy's, Girl Scouts, that sounds extremely exciting. And I should probably stay after school. During this time, I don't remember really what my ride situation was. I feel like my mom did come and pick me up, but on this particular day, I thought to myself, what a great idea. I'm gonna join Daisies and nobody's gonna be the wiser. So I stay after school. The leader of Girl Scout slash Daisies is like, circle up, gals, let's take attendance. And she starts saying names. She comes to a name, Andrea. Andrea, Andrea. Nobody answers. I raise my hand. I am Andrea now and I am in full-blown daisies. I don't know who Andrea is. I'm sorry that you were sick that day, but now I'm Andrea and I'm ready to commit to this daisy opportunity. We're circled up. We're talking about service projects and the sashes. Ooh, I was like, a badge, a sash. This is gonna be the greatest day of my life. And then on the speaker that does the morning announcements is like, Claire O'Malley to the office, please. Claire O'Malley to the office, please. I just told everybody that my name was Andrea. And I was trying to focus on what sashes and badges we were trying to get as a collective group of the Daisy Girl Scouts, okay? I couldn't give myself up and go to the office. So I'm sweating a little bit, but again, I am committing to the bit. I am Andrea now. Who the F is Claire O'Malley? I don't know and I don't care, and I cannot be answering to that name right now. I am busy. 15 minutes go by. Claire O'Malley to the office, please. Claire O'Malley. I look around the group. I don't say anything, but my energy is saying that Claire O'Malley could be missing, and that is scary. But I go along with it. I pretend I didn't even hear that announcement because right now we have important business to establish, and that is my role in the daisies of the Girl Scouts. I think they might have even talked about camp. Camp? I had never been to camp before. This was going to change my life. Another five to seven minutes go by, and somebody from the front office comes into the kindergarten classroom and peeks their head in and says, Is Claire O'Malley in here? Again, nope, no Claire O'Malley here. Please see yourself out. Thank you. Goodbye. We're doing daisy things in here. Shut the door on the way out. She leaves. But about two minutes later, she comes back with my mom. The gig is up. They found me. I am not Andrea. I am Claire O'Malley. I had to leave. My mom had to explain to me that I can't just join things on a whim. I need to talk to somebody and ask somebody for permission. She didn't even ask why I was Andrea. And if you listen to episode two, she's not, she didn't ask a lot. Okay. She's just trying to raise her four kids and do this life. At this point, it was just two. But what I'm trying to say is she really wasn't interested in my antics. She had already lived with me for six years. She probably knew, like, I'm not even going to ask because some tall tale will come out of this child's mouth. And I am tired. My estrogen is crashing. I think she was really busy at work too, because later down the road, my sister wanted to join gymnastics, and she literally walked like 45 minutes to the gymnastics studio and back because she didn't have a ride, but really, really wanted to do gymnastics. I don't understand that time. Like, was there nobody else that we could call a friend or something? But I also do know a lot of the neighbor drinking in the patio that we're doing today, my mom was not drinking on the patio. It was watching Days of Our Lives or X-Files and no drinking of wine. I don't, I maybe making TV dinners. Why does it feel like we have so much time to drink wine these days? I don't know. I'll never know. I'm not trying to figure it out. But guess what happened the next year? First grade? Who do you think was the troop leader? That's right. Your girl Julie, my mom. She led that troop. She even busted out her sewing machine and sewed, whatever the word is. She put some patches on that sash. Oh, that was a great year. That was really fun to be a Girl Scout. I enjoyed that time. But the good and the bad news is they knew who Claire O'Malley was after that day. Yeah. Yes, sir, rebop. They knew who I was and probably kept a close eye on the weirdo that decided to be Andrea for a good 45 minutes. But that wasn't the only thing that I did in kindergarten. There was a moment in time where the Broncos, yes, the Denver Broncos, everybody, the team I know and love. And fun fact, my elementary school mascot was a yearling, middle school was a pony, high school was a cult, and my NFL team is a Bronco. And it's the year of the horse. Let's thrive. In addition to my knack for telling a little lie to become something I'm not, I developed a passion for themes. And I believe it started at the ripe old age of six in that kindergarten classroom. The Denver Broncos, who I just mentioned, had gone to many a Super Bowl before and during my lifetime. But the prime, in my personal opinion, were the 80s and 90s. They had Super Bowl appearances. Are you ready for this? In 78, 87, 88, 90, 98, 99, 2014, and 2016. Hells to the yes. I don't know if this was the 87 appearance or not. I'm a little off on the years, but and don't ask me to calculate that. That's just too much. But apparently they might have gone to the playoffs or something. But in kindergarten, they were doing something great. And we were all in like our Bronco era, right? And this was the time of the old D. Oh, their logo and John Elway and all of it was just so amazing. If you listen to the first part of this episode, I ranted about all the days, but I will give you this. Anytime, anywhere you want to have a Denver Bronco Spirit Day, please do. It is transformative and it will change somebody's life. I can guarantee that because that's when I fell in love with themes. I remember telling my mom, no, I have to have this sweatshirt. And again, it's probably some sweatshirt that she thrifted. I don't care. We were balling on a budget. I was gonna make this work. I put bows in my hair. Where I found those bows, I don't know. We didn't have a craft store. There was no Walmart in 1986. I found some bows and I put two little dingle bangers in the front of my hair and put orange and blue bows. I think I got some blue eyeshadow or orange eyeshadow and made it into paint and did some sort of crafty project on my face. And I went to that school all pried out with Denver Broncos attire. And guess what? I was the 1986. Spirit Day winner. Yes, they had winners. This was a contest, and it was my first contest that I had won in a public setting, and I am very proud of it. It is probably my proudest award to date, which is saying a lot about my ability to earn awards or that I peaked in kindergarten. Okay. But here I am, proud to be Andrea slash Claire, the 1986 Denver Broncos Spirit Day winner. The best thing about being a Denver Broncos fan is that we go into every single football season thinking that we will win the Super Bowl. And we do a third of the time. So it is kind of nice and luxurious to be a Denver Broncos football fan. And I'm wondering now, should I forego my Bo Knicks jersey for a shirt that I personally make that said 1986 Denver Broncos Spirit Day winner at Sunset Park Elementary School afternoon class? I'm thinking I might do it. So if you see a Denver Broncos shirt with a lot of writing and we win the Super Bowl, I might have been the lucky charm. Okay. I just know that that trophy, that experience, that title, that win that I put so much blood, sweat, and tears in, and when I really peaked in kindergarten, that might have been it for me, but not for the Broncos. I could be the catalyst. That particular shirt and this core memory could ignite another Bronco Nations victory. And if it doesn't, I have some more stories about Super Bowls. So stay tuned because you're going to want to hear them. Let's take a pause real quick for a word from our sponsors. That's right. I don't have sponsors. I didn't have a way to transition, and I don't have sponsors, but just think you could put your name here for really any price. I don't have anything mapped out or negotiated with anybody. But if you DM me or text me or send me a Venmo, I could be reading your script right now. And approximately 35 to maybe 100 people could listen to it more as we get this off and popping and you sponsor and I put more effort and then I start learning how to do all of the bells and whistles. Now is the time to jump in on the front end of this deal and bear with Claire so that your business can lock in a super secret, top secret one that we haven't talked about or I know anything about rate. But if you call me and ask me, I will probably say yes. So just do it. And you could hear your name and your business right here in this podcast. And I promise, people will go and like and follow. And if not, I will tell them to sincerely, personally. And I also have like eight email subscribers. As soon as I know how to do an email list, we can also put your information in there. I'm just saying, I think you should do it. Get in on that ground floor before the opportunity passes you by. Get in, lock it in. Man, doesn't that make you just want to buy that thing from the sponsor that doesn't exist but will because I'm manifesting it? It does for me. Back to more stories about how I made poor decisions. So I think my sister was still going to Paula's, which was our home daycare babysitter neighbor best friend. And it was really great because there was an older sister and then a sister my age, a sister my sister's age, and then they had a baby, which was super fun because I think we were eight or something. I was when they had the baby, and it was like, oh, look at a cute little baby. And in that home daycare, your Claire directed many musicals. I believe I put on a Civil War play complete with Betsy Ross creating the first American flag. Is that something that happened? I don't know, but it was in my musical. We also did a commercial for Meals on Wheels. My mom at the time worked for she was the coordinator of a foster grandparent program. They take senior citizens and then put them in schools as aides. She was director of that, and we did Meals on Wheels on the weekends, and it was fun. And I made a commercial for that when I was in my home daycare era. So we would still frequent the home daycare because we were friends with them and my sister was still going there because I was a big kindergartner. However, this one time I was hanging with my friend Hannah in the home daycare. Now she's the daughter of the lady that's doing the daycare, which I'm saying daycare. It's not that vibe. It was more like my mom didn't have anywhere else to put me, so put me at a neighbor's house. It was an actual home daycare that she paid, but it didn't feel like that. And maybe it was just the 80s, maybe it was the different arrangement. I'm not sure, but it was very fun. Whatever she paid for it, she definitely got her money's worth. Now, this particular day, we were out in the front. Ooh, when it flooded in Pueblo, and sometimes it would flood pretty bad. The streets would fill. And this might be super showing my level of income, but we would play in the streets full of water. It was so fun. And the rains in Colorado, ooh, I can smell it now. So, so wonderful. This particular memory, we were outside, my friend Hannah and I. And as I mentioned, Hannah, daughter of Paula, who was running the whole shebang. So she was kind of VIP, and I was in with her like a bestie. Hannah and I were outside, probably rehearsing our latest dance number of the musical we were creating or writing the words, or sometimes we would plan our diets. Why we were dieting at like six years old, I have no idea, but we saw our parents do it, so we did it. Word to the wise, Mamas, your kids are watching you and they're trying to be just like you, whether they should or not, up for debate, but they are. We're out there gabbing, doing our thing, probably on a dance break. And she says, I know a secret. Right in that moment, I said, I know it too. Why did I say that? I have no idea. Again, with the lying and trying to be someone I'm not. Doesn't get me very far. And it will take me very long to learn that lesson, but it has created the basis of this podcast, so I'm not mad at it. So she says, I know a secret, and I said, I know a secret too. And she said, Well, tell me what you know, and I'll tell you if it's correct. And I said, You go first, since you said that you had the secret. Now, here's the time if you have little ones, which again I advise you not to be listening with your children in the car. But if you have any believers, you know, believers, right now, pause, come back later, alert, abort, stop. Okay, I gave you an ample warning. I'm back. She says, Well, I know the secret, and I'm gonna tell it to you. And I said, What what could it be? Tell me, girl. She says, Santa Claus is actually not real. And I said, I know that too. I did not know. I did not know this. I did not know the secret. I had a heart attack that I had to hide. I had to commit to my performance of actually knowing that secret. In that moment, I'm not sure what I said, but it had to have been something like, duh, of course we knew. And then I probably ran to the restroom and bawled my IS out because I did not know the secret. Now, I could only imagine what my reaction was in that moment. But if I am nothing else, I am a great actress and I stayed committed again to that bit and pretended I knew that, even though inside my soul was crushed and dying and withering away like a tiny dead plant. Sometimes life's really funny. And as I'm reflecting back, I probably knew in my heart that was the case and I knew the truth. But I think I go on for three years pretending that that might have not been the case. I think it was the next year of Christmas or something. I'm pretty sure I asked for like a pony and a computer and a kitty and a flute, and I got a calculator and a recorder and probably like a doll that I had to share with my sister. So I found out either way early on that Santa was my mom and doing the best that she could. Being Santa myself later on in life, I'm realizing kids do have to find out sooner or later because being Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and the magical mom and the mom that writes the school notes and the mom that gets the golden bowl for Golden Bowl Day and the mom that does paper mache day, and the mom that has all the signups, it's really tiring. So either way, it worked out. I now know what I now know. But word to the wise, don't tell people you know something that you don't know. And again, it would take me a very long time to learn that lesson, but alas, it's brought us here. So we're thankful that I was this kind of an idiot growing up. I really have no transition to get to subject to subject, and maybe I'll learn that down the line, but I'm not graceful at it. My mom and dad did a lot of gardening. Remember from the second episode, I tell you they they're big fans of the gardening. And I do remember at some point I said, Mom, why did you and dad used to smoke cigarettes with tweezers? Those weren't tweezers. That's called a roach clip. I don't know if they have them still to this day, but they should, because I remember how magical those tweezers were. They had feathers and beads hanging off of them. And I do remember them smoking cigarettes with tweezers, and that's probably why I had such a fun childhood. No, actually, my parents are good gardening or not, but that was a fun childhood memory of mine. And the smell of marijuana comes back to haunt me and educate me later in life. But for now, I just knew my parents were really cool smoking those cigarettes with tweezers with feathers hanging off of them. So fabulous. Can you imagine going to like a flea market or a farmer's market or a market market, whatever the markets are these days, and seeing a collection of roach clips? Oh, that would be really awesome. You could have beads on them with all of Pinterest and Etsy these days. You could really get fabulous with that. Bring back roach clips. Make America great again and bring back roach clips. Think about it. You could even use them as like clip on earrings, having them be all feathery and hanging off, and then be like, oh, we're smoking some Jays. Don't mind me. And then you unclip the earring and then pop it onto the thing. I still, I've never used one. I'd like to. You know what? Maybe I'll take this week to do that and report back. No, I'm not, because I can tell you, I can barely handle drinking caffeine these days. And the supplements on my counter are far and wide with this new transition in life. I'm not about to go down the gardening hole of life, but I will romanticize how it might be to use roach clips. And maybe I'll find something. Maybe I'll eat some, maybe I'll hold a chopstick and just walk around the neighborhood with a homemade roach clip. Do you think I could use just like a what are those things called? Um, not a paper clip. Clothespin. Do you think I could use a clothespin and just bedazzle it and tie some feathers onto it? I'll report back. Actually, I won't. These are a pipe dreams, but one of these days. Or one of you guys should do it and then tell me about it. One of y'all should do it. Anybody that gardens out there, go out and make a homemade roach clip and tell me the next time you get down and dirty, if it was as fabulous as it seemed to be in 1986. And then comment, like, DM, follow, link, like it to know it. You know, whatever. Another great thing about the 80s and 90s is that we didn't have electronics. Great or not. I do see the benefit of having text and computers and social media. I also see the downside. And that's not for us to get into talking about right now. What I'm just saying is these are the facts. We didn't have those things. So we did have to make our own fun, which is where I became a lover of theme parties and wrote and directed musicals about meals on wheels and the Civil War. I mean, who doesn't love a good six-year-old creating art in their living room? I think even for the Civil War, we use hangers as our like muskets. Is that what you call a gun from the Civil War time? I don't know. I don't know much about guns. The point I'm trying to make is we made our own fun. So one particular day, my mom was napping on the couch because she was tired, because it had to have been tiring being my mom. And she was doing it with my dad kind of, but he was fixing cars and playing golf and drinking beer and doing what paramedics do. I don't know. And so she kind of just had to manage this Andrea, Claire, Daisy show writer. So she was napping. And I thought to myself, now seems like a great idea to become the beautician I want to be. It is hair by Claire today. So I tell my sister this idea. And my sister loved her to pieces because you know what? She was always down a clown. She is my ride or die. If I had a bad idea, even if she said this is a bad idea, I said, strap it on, girlfriend, because we're going for it. So I have her go find some scissors and I said, find the trash can, because today is the day we're turning mom into a snack. My mom is asleep on the couch. She already had short hair, so I don't know what I was thinking here, but thankfully she did have short hair, so this repair wasn't that hard. She was sleeping. I think I had gotten my scissors out. I might have even put on an apron of some sort why we had aprons. I don't know, but we did, and I put that on and I told my sister to hold the trash can underneath where I started clipping. And I got into about four to five cuts, which is pretty big. So my mom had to be sleeping pretty heavily. And she woke up with a new set of bangs. She already had like a Mary Lou Retton, Chris Kardashian in the 80s vibe. So she kind of already had bangs, but nobody wants to chop into that bang area heavily. And that's exactly what I did. And my sweet mom, love her to this day, but I probably did produce a lot of drama, which is why on episode two, when you hear her talk, she's like, I don't know what's happening. I do love her, and God bless, I could not imagine being my own mother. She must have had to do a lot of bad things in her past life to get me as a child. Now that I'm looking back, I probably was not tired enough. I probably needed a full day of kindergarten because I was writing shows, I was learning about Santa, I was doing haircuts, just doing a lot of it. And on this particular day, because I was so versed in my own theater program at the daycare, and I had just given my mom a new haircut, I thought to myself, there is no better time with my captive audience that I would like to tell my entire family about my problems, just like I'm doing now. So there must have been a theme. So I thought it would be a great time to tell my mom and dad after dinner that they needed to sit down on the couch and watch me give them a talk. I immediately grabbed my little, we had those tables, kind of like I think Hello Kitty was on it, but it was a white table and it had two white chairs and it was four like toddlers. So I grabbed that chair, I dragged it across the very small living room, I stood up on it and I said, I have an announcement. I am having a lot of problems in kindergarten. This is my first known memory of when I became boy crazy. I loved boys. Bad boys, good boys, little boys, tall boys. I love the boys. And I may have peaked too soon looking back because after my divorce, I got myself a Subaru and a tool chest and some Birkenstocks, and I was like, let me try to be a lesbian. Because I do give off lesbian vibes a little bit, and I don't mind. I think that's a compliment. Actually, I love it now. In the past, I was kind of like, I'm not that way, but I am that way. I am that way. I still think I like boys. Actually, I'm in my asexual era. We'll get there. I'm going off on a side tangent and let's just bring it back in, okay? We'll find out why this is all happening later down the road. But yeah, I jumped ahead too many years. Let's just bring it back. Bring it back, bring it on back to kindergarten. So I pull my chair across the room, I stand up on it, and I say to them, I am having a lot of problems. I do not know who to be in love with. There is Jeff Rowe, and he has a staple in his forehead, and Michael Pate, who has a mullet, and I love them both. And there's also Danny Myers, who I also like, but he's kind of in third and I don't know what to do. And I was serious. I was serious as the sky is blue. I needed their help. I needed their guidance in this moment. They must have been smoking those cigarettes with tweezers because they kind of just looked at me and laughed. Again, this comes up many a times in my life. They just look at me dumbfounded. Like, why are you telling us these problems that we can't fix for you? We don't know. But what they should have done is said, don't like boys. Boys are bad. Honestly, though, if they would have said that, I would have been like, I like boys more. But much like this podcast, I simply just told everybody my problems with no clue how to fix them and no advice from anybody. Yeah, so that continues for the rest of my life into present day, which is why we're here. I don't know who I ended up falling in love with and deciding that would be my life partner for the rest of 1987. Could have been any one of them. But I do know that Jeff Rowe did have to get a staple in his head. And I think of him often. He transferred in like second grade or something. So if anybody knows Jeff Rowe, put him in the comments below. Let's find this kid, see if he still has a staple in his head. He was funny. He like talked like Fozzie Bear. And I always thought that that was the funniest thing I've ever heard anybody do. He seemed like a really kind guy that hadn't been jaded by the world. But weren't we all at six except the kid who punched the window? I don't know. Okay, but speaking of boys, I'm gonna leave you with this story. It's a little disturbing. So I wanna just forewarn you, it's a little disturbing. But do you guys want to hear about the first time I ever saw a peanut? I just said that. Weird. Okay, so my sister and my mom and I, yes, we were in the 80s, we would shower together, but it was all kind of just girls do their own thing. I never saw anything of my dad's, thankfully. And I'm very thankful as I listen to and hear other people's stories that they did encounter things. And I don't even really want to talk about it because it's just so mind-blowing how any violation of children comes into play for anybody in this world. Violating children is the one thing I can't comprehend. I wish it was an evil that didn't exist. I would take on heaps of other evil if that one thing didn't exist. It's just, it is, it is the end all grossest all. It's like it's the bottom of the barrel for me if of just evil grossness. And I do say I've done my fair share of sinning. I've done all of the bad thing, but that's the one thing that I'm like, that is scary, scary depths of hell scary for me. Yikes, we're getting a little dark. And on that note, you want to hear this next story? It's funny, but not funny. I think some of these things, and again, I'm not talking about I'm I don't even know how you say it. I'm thankful that I didn't have that experience. Yeah, of course, but like nobody should have it. So forewarning as we go into it, it's a little, it's just a little uh gray zone, if you will. So the way my house sat was it backed up to an alley, and we had like the old wood fences, and again, it was a smaller home. And me and my sister would be doing our dances and trying to do backflips and pretend we're Mary Lou Retton and having sprinkler things, and we did weird things in our backyard, okay? We were weird. We were a family, nobody had cameras, no electronics. Again, we were making our own entertainment, and that came in handy. That backyard, we were in it, we were partying for a six and a four-year-old. Again, we had to make our own entertainment, and that backyard was the stage of all of my shows, okay? I would do dilly dallies, we would go down slides, we would do acrobatic tricks, we were coming up with imaginary things and happenings, we were shaking the sunflowers, we were doing the darn thing in our backyard. I think we would sometimes fill a baby pool and whip the hose around. Pre-global warming, those Colorado days were so amazing. Cool nights, cool mornings, cool most days. Unlike other places I've lived. That's where I'll leave it because I know a lot of you guys are like, Texas. Okay, so me and my sister were just doing our TikTok dances that don't exist because there's no electronics in 1986. And we're doing our vibes. Maybe the pool's going. I had a Pac-Man swimsuit. Oh yeah. Rocking my mullet. She had her bowl cut. We were living our best lives. And along comes a guy knocking on the back of our fence. And he says, Do you want to see my thumb? And I said, sure. I mean, I who doesn't want to show their thumb to people? I don't know where my parents were at this point. Probably gardening, right? And the man sticks his quote unquote thumb through a hole in the fence. And I remember it was like weird looking. And I was like, ah, that thumb is missing a nail, doesn't look like a thumb. And he said, Do you want to tug it? And it looked kind of like if a six-year-old thought what leprosy would look like, that's what that thing looked like. Okay. And I was like, no, we have to go back to playing on our slide. Now, being concerned if I should like Jeff Rowe or Michael Pate or Danny Myers, I really hadn't seen any other thumbs, only the thumbs on hands. But that thumb would haunt my memories and my brain for a long time to come. It would take about 30 years. And in an EMDR session, I would think to myself, blink, blink, blink, that was not a thumb. And that's the first time I saw a penis, but didn't know it till 30 years later. And with that, I'd like to say, see you next Tuesday. Don't you all like that? I um my friend and I were like, when should I release the podcast? How about Tuesdays? And she was like, I don't know. I don't have anything to listen to on Tuesdays. So with that, I'm able to say, I'll see you, bear babes, next Tuesday. Thank y'all so much for tuning into this episode of Bear Bear. Hosted, directed, written, talked to, edited, sponsored by all things Claire. I love you all so much. Thank you for your support, and I'll see you next Tuesday.