Chapter 2
On Tuesday morning, I woke to the sound of a key turning in my front door. I had given my mother a spare key four years earlier, when I needed someone to water my plants during a weeklong job in Cincinnati, and apparently she still believed that meant she could enter whenever she pleased.
She walked in carrying her purse, followed by Kyle with a laser measuring device and Haley, who held a cup of coffee and stared at the floor.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Mom said. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just looking at a few things. Kyle needs the dimensions for the mortgage people.”
Kyle was already measuring the ceiling in my living room. He pointed the red laser toward the kitchen and muttered something about the square footage, while Haley stood beside the doorway looking miserable.
“I told him this was a bad idea,” she whispered.
“Haley, honey, don’t worry,” Mom replied. “Nobody’s doing anything wrong. Family doesn’t need appointments.”
I gripped the wall to steady myself. My stitches pulled painfully when I straightened, but I forced myself to look at my mother.
“I want the key back.”
She gave me the wounded expression I had known since childhood. “A mother shouldn’t need permission to enter her own child’s house.”
“It’s my house, Mom. Give me the key.”
She ignored me and began straightening a cushion on the couch. Then, almost casually, she asked whether I had checked my voicemail lately.
“Why?”
“Banks call people about accounts sometimes. You should make sure you haven’t missed anything important.”
I remembered seeing dozens of calls from unfamiliar numbers while I was recovering. I had assumed they were spam and deleted most of them.
“I haven’t checked,” I said. “I deleted a bunch of unknown numbers.”
For one brief moment, my mother went completely still. Then she smiled and told me I was right to be careful.
They left twenty minutes later without returning the key.
I called Ray, who arranged for a locksmith to replace both exterior locks that afternoon. When he saw how pale I looked, he folded his arms and said, “Megan, this isn’t normal. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Then stop making excuses for them.”
I wanted to tell him I had stopped, but the truth was that I was only beginning to understand how much of my life had been spent excusing behavior that would have been unacceptable from anyone else.
The following day, my aunt Carol called. She was my mother’s younger sister, a kind woman who cried easily and usually tried to smooth over every family disagreement.
“Megan, honey, your mother is heartbroken,” she said. “She told us you specifically asked for privacy while you were in the hospital. She said the doctors told her you didn’t want visitors.”
I sat down on the stairs.
“Carol, I begged her to come. I texted her from the ICU.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you were very sick. Maybe you don’t remember everything.”
I called my mother immediately.
“You told the family I refused visitors?”
“I told them what you told me.”
“I never said that.”
“Megan, you were on strong medication. Your memory may not be reliable right now. I’m worried about you, actually. Perhaps you should speak with someone about what you’re experiencing.”
She even threatened to contact a doctor about my supposed confusion, despite knowing I had spent weeks in the hospital recovering from a life-threatening infection.
I ended the call without arguing. Then I took screenshots of every message I had sent her and emailed them to myself.
That evening, Dad called to say Mom had suffered chest pains because of the stress I was causing her. He claimed she had been taken to the emergency room and was waiting for a doctor.
I jumped to my feet so quickly that pain tore through my abdomen.
“Which hospital? I’ll come.”
“She doesn’t want you here,” he replied. “She says you’ve done enough.”
I called Aunt Carol, who had spoken to Mom minutes earlier. My mother was at home, resting on the couch with a cup of tea after a brief visit to urgent care.
When I confronted Dad by text, Mom sent a message of her own: “You’ll know why if something happens.”
I put my phone face down on the kitchen island and stared at the dark screen. For the first time, I understood that guilt wasn’t merely something my mother experienced; it was something she knew how to use.
The next afternoon, Dad arrived with Kyle and a woman carrying a leather bag. Mom remained in the passenger seat of the car, wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy weather.
“This is Rhonda,” Dad explained. “She’s a mobile notary. We thought we could get the paperwork finished today.”
Kyle handed me a folder containing a quitclaim deed. My name appeared as the current owner, and his name, along with Haley’s, was typed into the section for the new owners.
“It’s simple,” he said. “You sign, she notarizes it, and we work out the moving details later. Haley’s pregnant, Megan. We need a place for the baby.”
I looked at him in disbelief.
“You didn’t visit me either.”
He shrugged. “I had a lot going on. You’re better now, aren’t you?”
Rhonda studied my face, the hand gripping the porch railing, and the folder Kyle held out. Then she closed her leather bag.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable notarizing this. She doesn’t appear to be in a condition to make this decision freely.”
Dad’s expression hardened. “She’s fine. We already told everyone this was handled.”
Rhonda refused to change her mind. She walked to her car without asking for the fee she had been promised.
Dad turned toward me, his jaw tight.
“Sign it, or don’t come home for Thanksgiving. Don’t come home at all.”
I looked at him and realized he was talking about the family home in Gahanna, the place where I had spent my childhood being told that family always came first.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “I don’t think I have a home to come back to.”
I went inside, locked the new deadbolts, and slid down against the door. I kept hearing his words, especially the part about how everything had already been handled.
Handled how? And who had they told?
On Friday afternoon, the toy tent arrived. I carried it into the kitchen, opened the package, and watched the little red-and-yellow pirate ship spring into shape on my walnut island.
I took a photograph and sent it to my mother with a single message.
“This is the only house I’m giving Kyle.”
Then I blocked her number, followed by Dad’s and Kyle’s. I made myself a cup of tea and sat across from the tent, feeling calmer than I had in weeks.
Three hours later, someone knocked on my front door.
I opened it cautiously and found my sixty-six-year-old Uncle Frank standing on the porch with a battered green duffel bag. He had driven four hours from Pennsylvania without stopping, and his knuckles were white from gripping the bag strap.
Frank was Dad’s older brother, a retired electrical lineman with a bad hip and a quiet way of speaking that made people underestimate him. They were usually wrong.
He looked at my pale face, then at the hand resting against my abdomen.
“Megan,” he said, his voice breaking slightly, “why didn’t anyone tell me you almost died?”
I stepped aside and let him in.
Chapter 3
Frank sat at my kitchen table, wrapped both hands around a mug of coffee, and listened while I told him about the ICU, the empty chair, and my parents’ demand for the house. He didn’t interrupt or offer excuses for them, and that alone made me feel as though I could finally breathe.
When I finished, he stared at the pirate tent on the island.
“Your mother called me the morning after you went into the hospital,” he said. “She told me you’d had a minor procedure and wanted to be left alone. I called six times after that, but she kept saying you weren’t taking calls.”
“I was on a ventilator, Uncle Frank.”
His face changed. “I know that now.”
He told me he had been visiting my parents earlier that month. One morning, he had heard Dad speaking on the phone in the garage, discussing a seventy-five-thousand-dollar loan for Kyle.
“The loan is for seventy-five thousand,” Dad had said. “Kyle’s the borrower. Megan is the guarantor. She’s good for it. She’s always good for it.”
Frank had never heard me agree to such an arrangement. He had come to my house because he was worried that my parents were hiding something, and now he feared the situation was worse than he’d imagined.
I opened my voicemail app and discovered that dozens of messages from unfamiliar numbers were still saved in the deleted folder. One was from Denise Whitfield at Lakeshore Federal Credit Union, asking me to verify my identity and consent to a loan guarantee.
The first message was dated March 17, three days after I entered the hospital. The next was dated March 21, and several more followed in the weeks after that.
The credit union had been trying to reach me because my verbal confirmation was required before the loan could proceed. I had been unconscious or too ill to answer, and my mother had repeatedly checked whether I had listened to those messages.
Suddenly, her strange question about my voicemail made sense. She hadn’t been checking on my well-being; she had been checking whether I had discovered the loan.
I contacted Raymond Hughes, my attorney, who had helped me purchase the land and establish my construction business. He listened carefully, requested my hospital records and credit report, and promised to investigate before I spoke to my parents again.
Two days later, he arrived at my house carrying a thick leather folder.
“The hospital records are clear,” he said. “Your mother was notified six times during the first two weeks. Your father was notified twice. There was no request for privacy, no visitor restriction, and no instruction from you that your family should stay away.”
He showed me the visitor notes. One entry documented that my mother had been told I was critically ill, yet she had declined to come because she was attending an event. Another noted that she had asked hospital staff not to provide further updates, claiming I wanted to be left alone.
My hands went cold.
Then Raymond opened the second folder.
The loan application had been submitted on March 11, three days before my surgery. It listed me as Kyle’s guarantor and included an electronic copy of my signature.
The handwriting looked exactly like mine.
I stared at it, recognizing the looping M and the long, flat line across the final letters of my surname. But I had never signed the document, and I had never agreed to guarantee Kyle’s debt.
“Someone forged my signature,” I whispered.
Raymond nodded. “The credit union has agreed to investigate. In the meantime, don’t contact your family, and don’t sign anything.”
Frank remained beside me as the truth settled over the kitchen. I had believed my mother had simply neglected me because she was too focused on Kyle, but the loan suggested something much darker.
They hadn’t merely forgotten me in the hospital. They had expected me to remain financially useful while I was unable to protect myself.
A few days later, Aunt Carol called with an invitation to Kyle and Haley’s engagement dinner at an elegant restaurant downtown. My mother wanted to settle things as a family, Carol explained, and she was willing to forgive me for the way I’d embarrassed everyone.
I played the voicemail for Raymond.
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Go to the dinner. Bring Frank, bring the documents, and don’t shout. Let them explain themselves in front of the people they’ve been lying to.”
I agreed to attend.
The restaurant was a converted bank with brass fixtures, white roses, candles, and a string quartet playing softly in the corner. Twenty-five relatives and friends filled the private dining room, including Haley’s parents, Tom and Susan Brandt.
My mother stood near the head table in a champagne-colored dress. Her smile disappeared when she saw Frank beside me and the folder under my arm, but she recovered quickly and opened her arms.
“Megan, honey! I’m so glad you finally decided to act like family.”
I didn’t hug her.
“I’d like to talk with you, Dad, and Kyle.”
Dad stepped forward, already red-faced with irritation.
“You wanted drama, Megan? Then say what you have to say right here.”
Kyle rolled his eyes and took a sip from his glass. He wore a charcoal suit and looked as though my presence had ruined an otherwise perfect evening.
“You embarrassed Mom with that stupid toy,” Dad said loudly. “She cried for two days because you couldn’t behave like an adult.”
“You missed thirty-one days,” I replied. “I nearly died, and not one of you came to see me.”
Kyle shook his head. “You’re making this into some big tragedy. You’ve always had more than me, Megan. The one time I need help, you turn it into a spectacle.”
I looked at him and remembered the little boy who used to hide in my bedroom during thunderstorms. I wondered when helping him had become more important to everyone than asking him to help himself.
Then I placed Raymond’s folder on the table.
“All right, Dad. You wanted me to explain myself, so let’s start with the hospital records.”
The conversations stopped as I opened the folder. I laid out the visitor notes, the messages, and the documents from Lakeshore Federal Credit Union.
My mother went pale.
Chapter 4
“Mom, you told our relatives I refused visitors,” I said. “You told Uncle Frank and Aunt Carol that I wanted to be left alone. You even told the hospital staff to stop contacting you because I supposedly didn’t want updates.”
“That isn’t what happened,” she replied quickly. “You’ve misunderstood everything.”
Frank stepped forward. “Linda, you called me the morning after Megan went into the ICU. You told me she was embarrassed and wanted privacy. You knew she was seriously ill, and you chose not to visit.”
Susan Brandt turned toward my mother, her expression full of disbelief.
“You told me the same thing,” she said. “You said Megan didn’t want anyone seeing her while she was sick.”
Haley stood beside her parents, holding a glass of sparkling water. She looked from my mother to Kyle, then back to me, as if she were trying to reconcile the people in front of her with everything she thought she knew.
I handed her my phone, showing her the message demanding that I sign over my house.
“You asked her to give you her house?” Haley whispered.
Kyle reached for the phone, but she stepped away from him.
“It’s not what it sounds like,” he said. “We were just trying to work something out.”
I removed the loan guarantee from the folder and held it up.
“There is also a seventy-five-thousand-dollar loan application filed three days before my surgery. My name is on it as guarantor, but I never signed it.”
Haley looked at Kyle. “You told me your debt was eleven thousand dollars.”
He stared at the floor.
“How much do you owe?” her father demanded.
After a long silence, Kyle admitted that his debt totaled nearly sixty-eight thousand dollars, much of it from sports betting and credit cards. Haley’s face crumpled, not because the money alone mattered, but because she realized how many lies had been told to make their future together look secure.
My mother rose abruptly.
“We were trying to help him! He’s drowning, and you have so much, Megan. You have a whole house you don’t even need. What were we supposed to do, watch our son lose everything?”
“I needed a mother for thirty-one days,” I said.
The room became so quiet that I could hear the soft hum of the heating system. I thought about the green chair beside my hospital bed and how many times I had looked toward the door, hoping someone from my family would appear.
“You were told I might die,” I continued. “You knew I was critically ill, and you chose not to come. Then, when I finally got home, you asked me to sign away the one thing I had built for myself. I didn’t need money from you. I didn’t need you to solve my problems. I needed someone to sit beside me when I was frightened.”
My mother opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“I’m done being the family’s bank,” I said. “I’m done being the strong one simply because everyone else finds it convenient. From now on, I’m going to live my life without sacrificing my future to make yours easier.”
Haley quietly removed her hand from Kyle’s. Her father put an arm around her shoulders, and the three of them walked out together.
One by one, relatives began leaving the room. Aunt Carol cried silently, and my cousin Dana gave me a small nod of support. I gathered my papers and headed toward the door.
Kyle caught my sleeve just before I reached it.
“Please,” he whispered. “Just tell them you knew about the loan. Tell them you agreed to it. You can fix this.”
I waited for him to apologize, to acknowledge what he’d done, or even to admit that he was ashamed. Instead, he stood there asking me to rescue him one more time.
“Not this time, Kyle.”
I walked outside with Frank, and my phone rang before we reached the parking garage. Raymond Hughes was calling, and his voice sounded unusually urgent.
“Megan, the credit union finished its forensic review. They compared the signature on the guarantee with thirty-eight known handwriting samples.”
I leaned against a concrete pillar.
“Whose signature was it?”
He paused before answering.
“Your mother’s.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. I remembered being seventeen, standing in the kitchen while Mom chopped onions for dinner, asking why my signature had appeared on a school permission form I had never touched.
She had laughed and kissed the top of my head.
“Who knows your handwriting better than I do, honey? I’ve been signing your name since kindergarten.”
At the time, I had believed she was being affectionate. Now I understood that she had been telling me something about herself, and I had been too young to recognize the warning.
Frank guided me toward his truck while I tried to process the news. A few minutes later, Dad appeared alone in the garage, his tie loosened and his face drained of color.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“Raymond says the signature is hers.”
Dad sat down on the bumper of a parked car and covered his face with both hands. He began to cry, not loudly, but with the helplessness of a man who had finally discovered the cost of refusing to see what was happening in his own family.
“She told me you had agreed,” he said. “She said it was just paperwork and that you would sign once you were feeling better. I believed her.”
“Did you believe her when I was in the ICU?”
He looked up but couldn’t answer.
“Dad, you didn’t need Mom’s permission to visit your daughter. You could have gotten in the car. You could have called the hospital yourself.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Megan.”
I believed he was sorry, but I wasn’t ready to make him feel better about what he’d done. For years, he’d stood quietly beside my mother’s decisions and let me carry the consequences. I couldn’t take responsibility for his guilt now, too.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I wish you’d been a different kind of father.”
Then I got into Frank’s truck and went home.
The legal process unfolded over the following months. Raymond filed a formal complaint, the credit union provided its records, and a detective interviewed me about the forged guarantee. Priya supplied a statement confirming my mother’s refusal to come to the hospital, and Rhonda, the notary who had declined to witness the deed, documented how Dad had insisted I was willing to sign despite my obvious condition.
My mother attempted to explain herself at first. She said she had been trying to help Kyle, that she had intended to tell me about the loan, and that she believed I would eventually agree.
When I refused to withdraw the complaint, she came to my job site one morning carrying a thermos and wearing the cream cardigan she had always worn when she wanted to appear harmless.
“Megan, please,” she said. “I’ll tear up the paperwork. I’ll call the bank myself. We can forget this ever happened and be a family again.”
“You forged my signature, Mom.”
“I was trying to help my son.”
“You were willing to risk my home while I was fighting to survive.”
She wiped her eyes. “After everything I’ve done for you, you’re going to destroy your own mother?”
I looked at her for a long moment. I remembered her green apron, the birdhouse we’d built together when I was eight, and the way she’d praised my hands as I carefully measured the pine boards.
“Go home, Mom,” I said.
For the first time, the softness in her expression disappeared. What remained was anger and disbelief, as though she couldn’t understand why the daughter who had always given in was finally refusing to bend.
She left without another word.
In August, my mother pleaded guilty to one count of forgery. Because the loan had never been funded, no money had changed hands, but the court imposed two years of community control, two hundred hours of community service, and a permanent criminal record.
I didn’t attend the hearing. Frank went in my place and later told me that when the judge asked my mother whether she had anything to say, she replied, “I was only trying to help my family.”
She never acknowledged the damage she had done to me.
Chapter 5
Kyle and Haley called off their engagement in May. Haley moved in with her parents while preparing for the baby, and Kyle eventually rented a room from a friend in Westerville. In June, he began attending a support program for his gambling problems, and Dad sold his unused boat and an old car to help him begin paying down his debts.
I heard about these changes from Frank, not from my brother. Kyle eventually asked whether he could write me a letter, but I told Haley I wasn’t ready to hear from him.
I didn’t wish him harm. I simply needed time to understand the difference between loving someone and allowing them to keep hurting me.
My father moved into a small apartment near Morse Road. Mom remained in the family house, and for the first time in their marriage, Dad had to decide what he believed without waiting for her to decide first.
He began calling me once a month. Our conversations were awkward, usually revolving around his knee, the weather, or the progress of my construction company, but he made an effort to ask questions and listen to the answers.
He never asked me to withdraw the complaint or forgive my mother. He seemed to understand that an apology could not erase the years of neglect, and that rebuilding trust required more than admitting he had been wrong.
I was grateful for that small change, though I kept my boundaries firmly in place.
My business continued to grow, and I hired two additional employees to handle the increased demand for custom furniture and remodeling projects. Ray remained my foreman and closest friend, while Frank visited every other weekend, sleeping in my guest room and making what he proudly called the worst scrambled eggs in Ohio.
In October, Haley gave birth to a healthy little girl named Nora Grace. She texted me from the hospital, asking whether I would come by because she needed someone she could trust.
I drove forty minutes to Riverside Hospital carrying a small bag of baby clothes and a stuffed giraffe. Haley looked exhausted but radiant, and when I entered her room, I saw a worn gray chair beside her bed.
I sat down and stayed for three hours. When Haley fell asleep, I held Nora carefully in my arms and watched the baby breathe, her tiny fingers curled against my sleeve.
I thought about my own hospital room, the green chair, and the thirty-one days during which my family had failed to show up. Then I looked at the little girl in my arms and understood that being present didn’t require money, grand speeches, or a perfect solution.
Sometimes it simply required sitting down and staying.
Haley and I kept in touch. She told me Kyle was attending his meetings, sending Nora a card every week, and working toward becoming someone his daughter could depend on. I hoped he would succeed, but I didn’t promise to reconcile with him.
People sometimes assume that forgiveness means restoring a relationship exactly as it was before. I had learned that forgiveness could mean letting go of the need for revenge while still refusing to hand someone the keys to your life.
My mother completed her community service the following spring. She worked at a local thrift shop, sorting donated coats and helping customers, and I heard that she was good at it. She sent me four letters that summer, each one carefully written and addressed in her familiar handwriting.
I placed them in a shoebox and put the box in a closet. I haven’t opened them.
I don’t hate her. Hate would require me to keep giving her my attention, and I have spent enough years trying to understand a woman whose love always seemed to come with conditions.
What I feel is closer to grief. I lost the mother I thought I had, the woman in the green apron who taught me to measure twice and cut once, the woman whose hand on my forehead once made the world feel safe.
I cannot know whether those memories were false or whether she was capable of genuine love but unwilling to let it interfere with what she wanted. Perhaps that is the hardest part of loving someone who has hurt you: the good memories don’t disappear just because the truth becomes impossible to ignore.
I still miss her sometimes, especially on Sunday evenings when the light turns gold and the neighborhood smells of pot roast and fresh bread. Missing her doesn’t mean I need to invite her back into my life, just as loving someone doesn’t mean allowing them to hurt you again.
Last Thanksgiving, I set eleven places at my kitchen table. Ray and his wife came, Frank drove down from Pennsylvania, Priya brought a pecan pie, and Dr. Okonkwo arrived wearing a ridiculous holiday sweater despite claiming that he didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Aunt Carol came, too. She stood in the kitchen, looked at the table I’d built, and began to cry.
“I should have called you every day,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered. “You should have.”
She nodded, accepting the truth without making excuses, and I handed her a plate. I had forgiven her because she had eventually admitted her mistake, and because I believed that people could learn from their failures when they stopped trying to defend them.
The little pirate tent remains folded in my guest room closet. Its red-and-yellow fabric is slightly faded now, and the tiny skull-and-crossbones flag has a crease down the middle, but I haven’t thrown it away.
When Nora turns three, I’ll unfold it in the living room and let her crawl inside. She’ll probably declare it a pirate ship, recruit every stuffed animal in the house as her crew, and demand that I help her search for imaginary treasure.
I won’t tell her where the tent came from. She doesn’t need to know that it was once a message to a family that believed my home was theirs to claim.
She’ll only need to know that she is welcome in my house, that she is loved, and that she never has to earn a place at my table by being useful to anyone.
The house on Larkspur Lane still stands exactly where I built it. The deed carries one name, mine, and the new deadbolts Ray arranged are still on the doors. The black walnut island has a faint coffee ring near one corner, a small mark from that difficult spring that I never bothered to sand away.
Every morning, I walk through the rooms and notice the things I once made with my own hands. The house is not valuable because an appraiser estimated its price, and it isn’t meaningful because my parents eventually learned to admire it. It matters because it represents the years I spent working toward a life I could call my own.
I once believed family was defined by blood, shared holidays, childhood photographs, and the people who had known me the longest. I thought love was something I could earn by giving enough, carrying enough, and making myself strong enough that nobody would ever have to worry about me.
Now I understand that family is also the person who drives four hours through the rain because he has finally learned the truth. It is the foreman who sits beside your hospital bed, the nurse who offers a kindness when you have nothing left to give, and the doctor who pulls up a chair even when he has no words to offer.
It is the person who notices when the chair beside you is empty and decides to fill it.
My father once failed to show up when I needed him most. He is trying, slowly, to become someone who understands what that failure cost, and I allow him the opportunity to keep trying without pretending the past never happened.
My brother may one day become the man I hope he can be. If that happens, I will decide what kind of relationship I can have with him based on his actions, not on the expectations of our parents or the demands of our shared history.
As for my mother, I no longer wait for her to call. I no longer wonder whether the next letter will contain the apology I need, and I no longer measure my worth by whether she can acknowledge it.
I spent thirty-one days in an ICU bed waiting for my family to walk through a door. I came home believing I had been forgotten, only to discover that the people who had abandoned me were also prepared to take the home I had built.
The truth was painful, but it gave me something I had never possessed before: the freedom to stop confusing obligation with love.
I didn’t need to become harder or more successful to deserve better treatment. I needed to recognize that my life belonged to me, and that I was allowed to protect it.
Sometimes I sit at my kitchen table in the evening and look at the empty chair across from me. People occasionally ask why I keep it there when I have more than enough room to put it somewhere else.
I tell them it’s for whoever needs it.
And every time I say those words, I remember the green chair beside my hospital bed, the one that remained empty while I waited for my mother. I remember the fear, the loneliness, and the terrible moment when I realized that the people I had spent my life trying to please might never become the people I needed them to be.
But I also remember the knock at my door three hours after I sent that photograph of the toy tent. I remember opening it and finding my uncle standing in the rain, asking why nobody had told him how bad things were.
For a long time, I believed that if I kept giving, someone would eventually love me enough to show up.
I was wrong about what I had to give, but I was not wrong to hope that someone would come.
Sometimes the person who shows up isn’t the one you expected. Sometimes the people who save you are the ones who never owed you anything at all.
And sometimes, when the people you love have failed you, the most important thing you can do is open the door to the people who haven’t.
THE END.
⚠️ All characters and events are fictional. Do not imitate or apply them in real life. 😌😌😌
