 Stephanie Garjulo. People come into our lives, and sometimes they can change the whole outcome of what may happen. When my son was 23 months old, and I know that really bothers some people, you should say, oh, he's two, or he's almost two. But he was only 23 months old. And at that time, I had to go back to work. And so he went into child care. And during that time, children are adorable, but let's face it, they're really germy. They do weird things. They put their feet in their mouth. And so big surprise, he ends up contracting a cold. And like any parent who has a sick, especially a young sick child, I took him to the doctor. And when we arrived to the doctor, I found out that a normal family pediatrician was on leave. And there was a fill-in doctor. And now I'm not a medical doctor, and I have no reason not to trust this woman. But she goes in, and she looks at my son, and she tells me he has hand, foot, and mouth. One of the big symptoms for hand, foot, and mouth to me would be you have blisters on your hands, feet, or mouth, which he had none of. So when we left that day, I had this feeling, call it mother's intuition, or a gut feeling that something was wrong. There was something more going on. But I took him home, and I did the whole sick mom and kid routine until he spiked 100 and four fever. I then took him back to this fill-in doctor who gave me the same exact spiel, and I left feeling the same way that it was hand, foot, and mouth. It's got to run its course. There's nothing they can do. So again, I take him home. I do the whole sick mom and kid routine again. And here we are, Friday morning. And I took him to the doctor on a Monday and on a Wednesday. And Friday morning, he is refusing to drink or eat. He's laying on the couch, and he's lethargic. And for anybody who's been around or raised a 23-month-old, that is not an atypical behavior for that age. And I take him back to the doctor. And at this point, the doctor is so furious with me. She practically kicks me out of her office and says that, ma'am, I've told you, your son has hand, foot, and mouth. He's very sick. You need to stop overreacting and take the boy home so he can rest. I again leave the office with that same feeling. But this time, I'm angry. I'm angry because I feel like nobody is listening to my words or concerns. And I go home, and I tell my husband this. And he says, well, maybe the doctor's right. You do tend to worry a lot. And he's not a medical professional. So why wouldn't he believe the doctor? And that night, I couldn't put him down. For whatever reason, I just couldn't set him to bed in his crib. So I spent the whole night holding him in my arms and dozing in and out of sleep on the couch. And as the early morning hours came, he began to look almost alienish to me. His complexion had gone to this weird, pasty gray color. And his breathing had started acting really weird. And so I went and I buckled him into the car seat. And I woke up an almost four-year-old daughter at the time. And I told my husband I'm taking him to the hospital. And I could tell by the look on my husband's face. He's thinking, well, you're probably overreacting. You've taken him to the doctor three times. They're telling you he's fine. But he doesn't say any of that stuff. He's a good man. And he just says, I really have to go to work. I have this important meeting today. And let me know how he makes out. And we live in the middle of nowhere. So we have three hospitals around us. But each one is a 45-minute drive in either direction. So I take him to the hospital. And it's about five o'clock in the morning when we get there. And they immediately start checking his vitals. And this middle-aged man comes in. And he sits next to me. And the words that come out of his mouth next will forever haunt me. He says, ma'am, your son is very ill. I have the dart helicopter on hold. And if we cannot stabilize his vitals in the next 15 to 20 minutes, we're going to airlift him to Dartmouth-Hitchcock where they may or may not be able to help him. And my heart sank in that moment because I felt like I had failed my son. And there was no worse feeling than feeling like you have failed your child. And I can't fall apart because I have his sister, who's almost four, stroking his hair and saying, it's OK, baby lamb. It's OK. And come to find out he did not have hand, foot, and mouth. He had contracted pneumonia in both his lungs. And by the time he got to the hospital, his oxygen level had dropped to 62%. So at this point, they start hooking him up to the oxygen machine. And they start sticking IVs in him. And they give him a shot of antibiotics. And he doesn't even flinch. I'm holding him in my arms. And he doesn't make a sound. He doesn't flinch. And at this point, the grandparents come in. And they take my daughter, so she can be someplace safe and happy, because I have no idea what's going to happen next. And my husband comes rushing from work. And he walks into the ER. And he looks at me. And he looks down at our son. And he immediately starts to cry. And in 13 years, I've seen my husband cry. He may be a handful of times. And this was one of them. And luckily, the doctor at the hospital is able to stabilize him in that 20-minute time frame. And he spent the next three days in the hospital recovering. And we get to take him home. We had specific instructions that he was not to be out in the general public for two weeks, because his immune system was completely gone. So during that two-week time when we were home, we got to celebrate his second birthday with him. And in a couple of months from now, he's going to turn seven. And he is everything a seven-year-old boy should be. He is loving and mischievous. And he's creative. And he's loud. Oh, boy, can he be really loud sometimes. And I wouldn't change any of it. But my husband and I owe that all to a man who came into our lives for less than an hour. And I can't even tell you his name. I can't tell you the name of the man who saved our son's life. But I can tell you that if it wasn't for him and his actions, my husband and my life and our daughter's life would be in a completely different place today. Thank you. Anne Ferguson. I'm a tramp. Actually, I'm what they call a trash tramp. I pick up litter every Tuesday in Montpelier for an hour. Been doing it for a while. Thanks. Thank you. My friend Bill came by the other day. And he says to me, I know you get a lot of trash, but did you ever find any treasures? Yeah, not often. This is about one of them. So it was a pouring rain Tuesday. We were dressed for it, so it wasn't a problem. I had been raining all night long. And there were massive puddles everywhere. And I was with these tramps. And we were going down Main Street across from City Hall. And one of the tramps, I think it was Sister Sludge. She says they all have goofy names. She says, oh my god, there's three dead baby birds right here at the curb. And I did not want to see that. So I walked past where she was standing. And just as I got past her, some motion caught my eye. And I looked down. And in this puddle was this baby bird, the fourth one, struggling to keep his little beak above the water. So I threw down my trash tramp equipment and supplies. And I scooped him out of the puddle. And he must have been so cold and so tired that he didn't fight me at all. In fact, he snuggled into my warm hands. And I could feel his heart beating against my hand. And I needed help. And so I went to the police station, right? OK? Where else, right? And I walked in. And I said to the dispatcher, I have a baby bird. And she says, cool as a cucumber. She says, I'll be right with you. And I tell you, I love dispatchers. Oh my god, they're just like amazing. They can turn on a dime to deal with any problem at any moment, right? And so she comes out shortly with the cardboard box. And this is the absolute truth. It was half filled with shredded restraining orders. No lie, no lie whatsoever. And so we made a little nest in the restraining orders. And we put the baby bird in there. And within seconds, he was fast asleep. And the dispatcher knows I'm a tramp. So she said, I'll take care of the bird while you go. And so we went out and finished our job. And after about an hour, we came back to the police station. And during that time, the dispatcher, who I love dispatchers, had been making all these phone calls. And she said, well, what we all actually knew was that I was going to have to, or the bird, was going to have to get down to Vince, the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, because that is where they take care of baby birds and injured birds and stuff like this. And so she talked to this really cool guy named Peter down there. And he also said that there's a guy in Rochester, not Roxbury, that transports baby birds and stuff for them. So that was really good, right? So I get home, take the baby bird home, and I'll call the guy in Roxbury. And he says, do you have a baby song bird? And I was like, yeah. And he says, I can't transport them. They have to be fed every 20 minutes or a half an hour. And I'm like, oh, no, because I already had this baby bird for an hour and a half. And I did not want him to die. So I put him in the car and drove to Quechie. But before I did that, I called Peter to make sure this guy, Peter, to make sure he'd still be there. And he said, I'll be here till you get here. So that was really cool, right? And so I get there and I bring the bird in. And he says, what you have here is a male house, Vince. He's not quite two weeks old. It'll be another week before he would fly. You did the right thing. He's going to be OK. And I was like, so relieved, right? So I had to fill out some papers. And he gave me this special phone number for me to call him to let him, because I wanted to find out how the baby bird was doing and everything, right? Oh my god. And so I'm driving back. And I'm thinking, I did this to save a house, Vince. To save a house, Vince. That made me think of to kill a walking bird, right? So to save a house, Vince should kill. So then that's dawn on me. I have to name him. Atticus, Vince. Yes. Yes, right. That's right. So a few weeks later, a number of weeks later, I'm not sure how many, we're coming back from a vacation. And we went past Quiche. And I said to the other people in the car, do you want to go see Atticus? And they're like, yeah, of course, you know, right? Because I told them all about him. And so we get there. And Peter was there. He's always there. And so he said, he's ready to be released. And I was like, over the moon, excited. We get to do that. And so he went online to find out where they had had sightings of other house Finches in the area. And so there was a park on the Connecticut River, just like six miles away. We could take the bird there and release him. So they put him in this little cardboard box. And we drove to the park. And we walk in the woods and open the box. And Atticus flies out. But he only lands right on the little branch right there. And you know, I'm looking at him. And I'm thinking, this little guy has been through so much in his short life, you know? He's almost drowned. He's lost his siblings. He's ended up in the police station. He ridden in a car. He went to rehab, right? Where one thing he did was he hung out with a nut hatch. And so he's sitting there on the branch in this tree. But I've got to tell you, there's part of me that knew all along he would be OK, because we found him in front of a store called One More Time. Maggie Mae Anderson. My favorite teacher in high school was Miss Donette. I had her for sophomore year English. And I had her all four years from my drama coach. Now as an English teacher, she was awesome, because she brought on her theatrical leanings. And this woman would actually act out the definition of vocabulary words. And she really would. And then she also often had us act out scenes from books we were reading. And then as a drama coach, she was awesome, because she was demanding. This woman would want the best performance she could get out of you. And she was not settling for like mere high school quality. She was exacting. She was precise. But she was also fun and encouraging and enthusiastic and super inspiring. And now, I don't know about you people, but high school was a little tumultuous for me. I mean, never mind hormones and the whole awkwardness of that age. But one of my brothers had cancer. The other one was mentally ill. My mom left my dad. And theater and the drama club and that auditorium and that stage were my safe haven. It was the one place I showed up to 100% of the time and gave 110%. I loved acting. I loved my friends in the drama club. And I didn't want to let down Miss Donette. So I acted all four years, got bigger and bigger roles as I went through high school. And my senior year, I really wanted a big role in this final year musical. It was my last performance. And I felt like I'd earned it. And prior to auditions, Miss Donette pulled me aside. And she was like, hey, part of the reason why we chose Bye Bye Birdie is because May Peterson, the comedic lead, doesn't have any solos. And she said, kid, you can act. You can dance. You don't have the best singing voice. Show up for this audition prepared. And she couldn't have been more clear, right? Essentially, we want to give you this part. Don't fuck it up. So I came prepared. I nailed it. I got the part. And to this day, this is honestly one of my favorite memories of my whole life. My senior year, opening night, Bye Bye Birdie. My first scene, I walk out on stage. I give it my all. I exit stage left. And the audience erupts in applause at a spot where you wouldn't have expected applause in the play. And I turn from the wings. And I look back over. And one of my friends is on the other side of the wings going, that's for you, that's for you. And it was just like a really huge, warm, fuzzy, proud moment. So as I mentioned, my mom left my junior year. And she left and moved directly in with Miss Donette, which seemed natural. They both taught the same high school. And they've been friends for years. And like, yeah, you randomly leave my dad and move him with your best friend and get your shit together, mom. And it wasn't until months later, when I was cutting class with a good friend and actually handing me the joint, she's like, do you ever think that maybe your mom and Miss Donette? And no, actually, I had never thought of that. And I didn't really want to think about it now. So I think I'll keep that a little bit longer. Thank you so much. Maybe we're skipping two classes. So it actually took my mom and Miss Donette five years until they came out to me. They took their time slowly coming out to people. And they sat me down and told me what I already knew, that they loved each other. And there were a couple. And then about two years later, they bought a house together. And also when they came out, Miss Donette asked, would you please call me Chris? So now my mom and Chris owned a house together. And she was officially in the family. And it was then that I started to realize the things that made Miss Donette such an awesome teacher and great drama coach, maybe we're going to be a little bit like oil and water with my family. My family is big, loud, and chaotic. We play by no rules. We take nothing seriously. And I was realizing Chris was a little bit neurotic. And she had ways to do things. And things were supposed to be proper. And it just was a weird fit for the whole of my family. So I took to saying hello, hug and kiss, how you been. And kind of just ignoring her. Like I never really pulled her into the fold. And I've essentially spent almost 20 years kind of just like, hey, OK. And that is until a few years ago when she got diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. And it really hit me like a ton of frickin' bricks. Like this woman had been an anchor and a support and like a cheerleader for me all throughout high school. And what the fuck kind of stepdaughter was I being for 20 almost years, not really embracing her. So I realized I had to step up my game. And I started to really pay attention. I noticed that amongst my big, loud, chaotic family that she would get really nervous. And I quickly realized or learned that I could approach her and sing any song from any musical that she ever directed. And not only would she like light up and start to sing, no joke, half the time she will bust into choreography because she can remember the dance from a song, from a musical she directed in 1984. So the past few years, unfortunately, her anxiety because of the disease was getting really, really high. And she didn't want to leave the house. And my mom was starting to feel like a prisoner because she only felt safe in their house with my mom. And so she's missed a bunch of family gatherings. And just in the past 12 months, the doctors have changed her medication. She's less anxious. And so for the first time in a year, she came to my brother's Christmas party. And again, my small gatherings of my family are 40 people. And loud, chaotic craziness. And I suddenly feel Chris tell you on my elbow. And I turn around and she's obviously anxious. And she says to me, I don't know where I'm supposed to be. And I misunderstood her at first. I'm like, oh, okay, you're at my brother Sean's house. And she said, no, I know that. I don't know where I'm supposed to be. And it broke my heart because the woman surrounded by people that she's been with for more than 20 years, but she doesn't know where she's supposed to be. So I slipped my hand into hers and it ushered her into a quiet corner of the living room so we could look at the tree. I wrapped my arm around her. And for some reason, I started to sing, do you know the song Christmas Bride? Santa, make my bride for Christmas. Christmas. And she whole body softens and she leans into me. And we start to sway together. And after a few more lines, she looks up and says, I didn't know you could sing. But wait, you have such a nice singing voice. Please, keep singing. Keep singing. And in all honesty, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, right? Laugh because, oh my God, this is freaking ironic. Like, you don't remember. But also just cry, cry how full circle it all was. So I just pulled her in closer and kept singing. Stuart Hancock. So I grew up in New York City and I was always a sports nut and I was a Yankee fan and I became a Yankee fan and a baseball fan. Right about the time the Yankees went from winning either the World Series or the Pennant every year into the absolute toilet in the cellar. And for those of you who've been New England or New England fans for many years, this was all during the time when, I'm sorry to say, the Red Sox were winning absolutely nothing at all. And I know they've rectified that in this century, but back then it was, they were either coming close in 67 and not winning a series or winning nothing at all. So the Yankees followed in that model and being a front runner, I hung with them for a couple of years and then in 1969, I ran over to the Mets and decided I was going to be a Mets fan because the Mets were now actually looking like a real baseball team and I'd actually have a chance to go somewhere. And during that time, there was a, my best friend in New York, a guy named Andrew. Andrew and I used to start going to, and we'd been going to baseball games at Yankee Stadium for a while, you could get into the center field bleachers for, get this, 75 cents. And being 10, 11, 12 year old kids, we'd get into the bleachers for 75 cents and then we'd find our way to the, shall we say the better seats in the establishment. So anyway, in 1969, we decided to, we hopped on the Mets bandwagon and Andrew and his family drank a lot of milk. And why that's important is because back then they had this promotion where the milk cartons had these boarden tickets that you could cut off the cartons and if you got enough of them, that was actually a free ticket, a free ticket into a New York Mets game. So we started going to Mets games based on however many of these things it was and we take the seven train out to Willets Point Chase Stadium and go watch a game. And right at the time in 1969 when the Mets started to make a serious run on the pennant and they were chasing the Chicago Cubs and the Cubs were leading the league but they were starting to falter and it looked like the Mets were really gonna catch up to them and they were only a couple games back and so we decided to go to the games where the Mets were like a game and a half back and they had a seven game winning streak and the Cubs were losing all the time and you could just sense the energy. You could sense that something really good could happen for the Mets this year and we had no idea at the time they were gonna win the pennant and go on to win the World Series and so on and so forth but it was all a very exciting time and so a couple of 12 year olds get on the subway and we go out and we had our wad of Borden's tickets and what we didn't know, we didn't know is that they only a lot allocate so many tickets for this particular promotion for every game and so we go to the booth and we hand them our Borden's tickets and they go up, they're no more tickets, sorry and being New York, they said like too bad, go away. So we had no money, no money to speak of and that was a pretty big bummer and so Andrew and I started to discuss options and one of the things, one of the potential options we discussed was the fact that surrounding the outfield at Chase Stadium was about a 20 foot high chain link fence and then in between the chain link fence and the actual outfield wall was some fairly significant expanse of lawn and they had some monuments in there and a couple of other odds and ends and having no great plan we thought why don't we climb the fence and see if we can find a way into the ballpark so Andrew and I scaled for 12 year old kids it's nothing to all, it was 20 feet of chain link we go over the top and we drop down and we're now in this middle zone once again with no plan and in a stadium all the lights are shining down on you so it's like being on a stage and doing a play or a musical you can't really see the audience and so we had no sense that there's 50,000 people staring down at us and of course we're completely visible to them and Andrew and I are going like what are we gonna do, where are we gonna go and there's a monument there it's not very high but one of the coaches in the Mets, Joe Pignatano have been growing tomato plants right in front of the monument and they hadn't had a really good year so they pretty much got so he's like, well let's hide behind the tomato so we crawl, we crawl and Andrew says, he says can you hear them and I wasn't paying no attention and the crowd is going, get those kids get those kids and I had no idea, I'm like, oh my God so we crawl behind the tomato plants and the monument and of course the entire world except us knows that this is going on and so the next thing you know there's a cop, this is a cop shows up we're not terribly well hidden behind her and the cop shows up and he's right out of Central Cassie and you call him Clancy you know he's billy like this hey, come here so we like sheepishly come out from behind there and he leads us and we don't know where we're going is this an arrest and he goes, what are you kids doing and so we totally forgot about the entire board in this ticket story and we made up this wild oh, we bought the tickets and we lost them and he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah and so he leads us along the actual outfield wall and he opens up a door and it's into the Cubs bullpen and there was this world series or excuse me, Hall of Fame picture for the Cubs name Ferguson Jenkins and he's warming up because this is 30 minutes before the game and we are big baseball fans and played as kids but we're sitting here watching a Major League pitcher warm up and he's throwing the ball and it's just going to the catcher's mitt and it's going pow, whoosh, pow, whoosh and so we walk by with this cop and we're just like watching this this pitcher explode this ball into this mitt with these boom, boom, boom and the cop leads us to the door on the other end of the bullpen and he opens it and more in this space I can't even describe it was like a no man's land we still have no idea he hasn't told us what we're doing hasn't told us where we're going and they opens up one more door and it's into the stadium grandstands and he goes, get lost thank you