• I was writing a speech for my commencement from 9th grade to 10th. I think I was as old as I am now, with a healthy contempt for the administration's sense of morality.

I wrote my speech about how much cooler orcas are than dolphins. I said it was cool that bottlenose dolphins could levitate stuff with their minds, but orcas could destroy them.

Then I started talking about some strange specie of dolphin that had silver and red metal plating all over its body. It had a patch of teeth on the top of its head that it used to navigate and migrated in large numbers to Detroit every year.

I don't know if I ever read my speech.

• I was in a grocery store, telling Jason [my brother] a long-winded, meandering story about being in a grocery store. As I was telling it, a guy who looked to be fifteen or twenty feet tall squeezed his way through the doors. My story ended with a giant coming into the grocery store.