I was talking with some friends recently and had a Valentine’s Day memory come top of mind.

So back in the era of when you were in elementary school, and by you I mean me, and you do the Valentine’s sharing thing.

My mom would buy the Valentines and I would fill them out, write each kid’s name on them and you pass them out to the classroom.

They do that differently in school now.

I think you still do that in your own classroom.

And then there was one year, maybe last school year, where we got them for Liam again so that he could hand them out.

And the teacher called or emailed and was like, hey, although all the students could bring in Valentines, only Liam did.

Do you still want me to pass them out?

We were like, no.

So that was fun.

But I was remembering, you know, I did this as a kid.

And I remember there was some time where my mom had asked me, did I want to get Valentines for the family?

I was like, no, I don’t need it.

I’m going to get it when I’m out of school.

Like, I’m not in love with my family.

I guess I don’t think I was thinking at the same time I’m in love with all my fellow students, but whatever.

No, I don’t need to do that.

What I didn’t realize when mom had posed me this question was that everybody else in my family was going to hand out Valentines.

And why didn’t I realize this?

That’s on me.

My family always passed out Valentines, I guess, for years.

So it’s now the evening, I’m home from school, I’ve gotten all my Valentines at school.

And my family’s like, hey, we’re going to start trading Valentines.

And I’m like, oh man, I didn’t get any.

This is horrible.

And I’m thinking about it.

And suddenly I race to my room so I can get Valentines and give them to my family.

And the way I’m doing this is I find ones that I think are relevant to the person.

My dad loves trains.

And I remember I had a Valentine with a train.

It did not say I choo choo choo as far as I know, but that kind of Valentine.

And I crossed out my name on it and I crossed out whoever the kid, I can picture the kid, but I don’t know what his name was, I crossed out the kid’s name who had given me the card.

And I remember, you know, dad, where it said Lex and Lex, where it said other kid’s name.

And I gave that to him.

And what I remember is my whole family finding this hilarious, like this notion of my taking Valentines and crossing out names and rewriting other names and giving them out.

They found this very funny.

They’re right.

It is very funny.

As a kid though, oh man, not a pleasant memory.

Like so sad and embarrassing.

Like oh my God, I really screwed this up.

I’m not going to pause for hours.

So we’ll see if I pick up on the Valentine’s theme when I come back or not.

You’ll know in a second.

I left in some sound work there, not fully work as it was the real sounds, but it turns out that when I left the house to go out for lunch in the midst of recording this episode, I never pressed stop on the recording.

So I had, uh, I don’t know, an hour plus of, um, room sound.

But now I just realized I deleted it without looking and like, what if there was some weird noise in the middle?

Now I’m going to go check.

I have to not lose this part, but undo my deletion.

Stand by.

Well, here we are again.

We had one lengthy pause while I left and went to lunch and then a shorter pause just now while I checked to see if there were any noises captured on my recording, uh, while I had accidentally left it running.

I deeply regret that I checked.

Um, and I have struggled for a moment here thinking about how will I discuss this?

So there was occasional pet noise, you know, like clearly a dog and or a cat walked into the office at some point and walked around and I got that.

There’s also a recording of me.

There’s a recording in the middle.

Oh my God, this sounds insane.

There’s a recording of me, uh, saying a sentence, um, that I had said earlier today.

While not recording this, there’s no logic.

I mean, listen, I, I, uh, I don’t think that there are any ghosts or poltergeists or other strange supernatural things occurring in my home office, but much earlier today I was talking to Lauren about today’s spelling bee and about how she knew the word that was the pangram and I said, it’s a word you’re very familiar with.

I was not recording at the time in the middle of my recording of, uh, the silence in my house, um, I am caught on the recording fully Mike saying it, I have absolutely no explanation for it and I’m going to choose not to think about it.

Now people are going to hear this episode and they’re gonna ask me about it.

I have no explanation.

Don’t ask me for the explanation.

I have no idea, but smack dab and I deleted it cause I don’t want to think about it, but smack dab in the middle of all the silence was recording of me saying, uh, is definitely a word, you know, um, there is no explanation for how that happened.

Uh, unless somebody else had recorded me while I said it and then came up to the microphone that was recording, uh, while I left my house and played it there, which is not a thing that happened and is not possible.

So anyway, that’s freaky as hell.

And this episode has taken quite the journey.

Happy Tuesday.

What the hell?

Look at all of them.