Tales of a Type B

Have you ever looked at Nora and wondered, what is going on inside her head? Today, you’re going to learn. This episode is for the ADHD, messy, carefree, anxious and also not anxious humans of the world: the Type Bs. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.

And I am making this episode because I am a type B person, living in a world filled with people who keep it together, people who know what their daily schedule is, aren’t constantly running late, people who don’t book the right flight for the wrong

day, or book their own flights correctly, but forget to book their family’s flights. People who, a lot of these are travel related, but for a person who has gotten a lot done and has accomplished a lot, I also am not a person who is highly

regimented. I am not a person who, like my big sister, is so solid that I feel like I could set a watch by her routines. There’s certain things that I do, certain things that honestly I’ve picked up from her.

I like to do my nails on a Sunday, and make my bed every day, things like that. But I was raised by a Type B woman.

I am the product of Margaret McInerny, and not in any way except my physical build and my face, the product of Steve McInerny, a man who got out of the Marines and said, I will take these routines with me through the rest of my life.

This was a man who ironed. This was a man who did his laundry separately from the rest of the family because he liked his laundry done a certain way, and also he did not like if we took any of his socks.

He also marked his socks with his initial emblem, so we couldn’t claim, no, I actually bought the same socks as you. He did not trust us with his socks or his laundry. My dad ran a tight ship.

My mom was kind of just paddling a little canoe next to that ship in a lot of ways. It kind of disturbs people that I drink my coffee in my car in just a mug. Any mug can be a travel mug.

If you take it with you, I own travel mugs. I don’t want to drink something from a lid. I want to drink from a ceramic mug with a handle, and I will live with the sloshes on my clothing and in my car.

I will live with the residue. I will live with the residual smell, okay? So it’s very fitting.

It’s very fitting that today I sat down to call people who called in with their Type B stories and started my first one by not hitting record. Not hitting record. That’s a pretty key part of recording a podcast.

You do have to hit the record button, unfortunately.

You know, they say there’s two types of people in this world, and I think we all know that there are probably infinite kinds of people in this world, but there is something that I really do like about a binary. I like a Type A versus a Type B.

I really do. I am pretty happily Type B now, but I spent a lot of my life trying to be anything but Type B.

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to just like get myself in to that straight and narrow to be a lot more like my sister, a lot more like my dad, a lot less like me.

But what I see myself now is I see myself as a flexible girl, a carefree girl, not carefree, I have a lot of cares. But sometimes I can free myself of those cares. I am often anxious, but also, sometimes I’m just like, well, what are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do? I have ADHD, which I don’t want to make a personality trait, but a lot of the things that I think make me Type B, other people have pointed out are like, well, could be that, could be, could just be your ADHD.

But there are things that I do as a Type B person that would send a Type A girlie, like my sister, like my husband, into a tailspin, things that have sent both of these people into an absolute tailspin.

Unfortunately for my husband Matthew, a man who wakes up at the exact same time every day, does the exact same thing every day, has never lost something. He’s had, he drinks out of the same travel mug. I mean, I could never be me.

He drinks out of it even at home, like you’re not traveling. I mean, you’re traveling to the chair that you read in every morning, but you’re not going anywhere. He’s had that for six years.

He would have had it for ten except one time. He brought it to a soccer game at our oldest son’s high school. It fell into the bleachers and the bleachers were not accessible from anywhere.

They were like built into a hill and he couldn’t retrieve the cup. He considered like going down under, he couldn’t fit. Like this man doesn’t lose things, he doesn’t break things.

He is, he runs like an absolute clock. He has to be paying off some kind of karmic debt to be with me. A woman who has gotten to the airport with him, checked in for my flight, and then found out I didn’t actually book his flight for the same day.

And he would be leaving the next day with the toddler who was sobbing when I was like, well, I got to go, I got to get on this flight. See you tomorrow. Bye.

In another life, Matthew is married to a woman who lives by a schedule, who makes itineraries. But in this one, he is tied to me.

He is with a woman who often forgets to take her Adderall and then has to call him and say, will you bring Adderall to the studio because I forgot it. This is just Carmich-Dett. This is who he is yoked to for this lifetime.

And I don’t know what he did in a past life, but it could not have been good. And I am happy to make sure that he pays for it.

So type B things that I do include running out of gas a half a block from the gas station after saying the entire day driving Sophie and her friend around, we gotta stop for gas. Guys, we gotta stop for gas. We gotta stop for gas.

I said that when it was at 25 miles to empty, when it was at 15 miles to empty, when it was at 10 miles to empty, when it was at five miles to empty, all of a sudden it’s at zero, and we are coasting into a parking lot. Barely, barely making it.

I drive with my, I already mentioned my coffee mug. I’m driving with my, just a, people call it free mugging. That’s how I was raised.

My mom, when she pulled up to get us, there would just be a clatter, a clatter in the back of her Corolla. And that was mugs from our home that had disappeared and would be living out the rest of their days in the backseat of my mom’s car.

I let my kids decorate their own rooms. I mean, you want to see stickers? Put them on your wall.

What do I care? It’s your room, okay? So yeah, at about like the three foot mark on their doors, outside in our hallway, and in their walls, like there’s just a cluster of stickers, okay?

Their room, their world, go for it. I love it. I love a gallery wall.

I’m not going to measure. I’m not going to measure. I’m not going to measure.

My husband says, look, give me a day, and I’m going to lay everything out. I’ll measure it. I’ll buy like the right proper things to hang it with.

I say, give me a hammer and get out of my way, okay? I’ll know something is at a certain time. Like, I know it.

I know something’s at a certain time. Like, today, I had calls set, and these calls were for between 2 and 4 central time. I knew that.

I said, central time, central time. It’s two hours ahead of me. And still, I sat down at 2 o’clock my time and was like, oh, no, I missed it.

I missed it, but I thought in my head all day, I have more time, I have more time. Offered to make dinner for my family tonight. I actually have something else going on tonight, so I won’t be doing that.

You know, there’s a lot. There’s a lot. So I asked all the type B girlies, and by that, I mean men, women, theys, everybody, to send in the things that they do.

They’re type B moments that drive the type A’s in their life. Absolutely nuts. And somehow, everybody found their phones, found the right phone number, and sent these things to me.

So we’re gonna go do it. Let’s have some type B conversations. If I remember to hit record, which I already forgot to do.

Megan, which one of us is type A? Not you.

One of my, I would say my abiding memories of you as a child were going to your room when you weren’t there, and everything being perfectly in place, knowing that on Sundays, you would sit down, turn on the TV, fold your laundry.

This is like you’re in high school. I’m a kid. You’re folding your laundry.

And then once your laundry is all done, you sit down, you give yourself a full manicure. I still do that to this day. Except my husband does the laundry now, but every Sunday night, I paint my nails.

It’s like a ritual.

I can’t.

It’s not a proper week without it. Yeah. Also, your handwriting, so neat.

Everything in your room, so neat. I remember going to your first apartment and being like, wow. My sister is a woman.

In retrospect, it’s funny because that was such a shithole apartment, with brown carpet and carpet in the kitchen. I just remember being like, Sheik, there was a fireplace and you put candles in it. And I was like, oh, yeah, baby.

Wow. Wow. This is real.

And everything was just put away perfectly. I am not that way. I would say, everyone knows that.

I have learned to live with it. People have learned to live with it. People have learned to live with me.

But I’m known for specifically messing up dates, times, travel details, details in general. Basically anything that goes on a calendar is not great for you. It’s not great.

It’s not great. I’ll say, I looked at my cal… Oh, okay.

Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right.

I’ll say, well, I’m gonna check my texts and see. You did text me the exact, every detail, every detail that I needed. Well, I’m so type A, I will go back and correct my calendar in the past.

Like, let’s say you and I make plans to have coffee from 10 to 11, and it ends up being 10 to one. I will sometimes update my calendar so I know, so I actually did that until one. That’s weird, right?

I think it’s kind of beautiful because you’re, I think it’s genius. I think it’s genius. Every time, I’ve been getting all these like type A TikToks, and I’m always like, wow, those are mostly women, like have their lives together.

I just see you in all these different women. And that is something, I love it because it really does, I mean, in a lot of ways, like our calendar is kind of like a diary. It’s like what we were doing, right?

Like that’s our life. So, I would never do it. Yeah, that’s how I think about it.

Like then I, like, cause a lot of it is I don’t, my actual memory isn’t that good. So I have all these systems and routines so that I don’t have to remember. Yeah.

So what happened with the flights? Oh my God. Well, not only am I turning into my mom, I’m also turning into my sister.

This is, I can’t believe this happened to me. This is so embarrassing. Of course, you’re making me talk about this.

Okay. So we are going to a wedding this weekend, and it is a grown-ups only affair. But like the fun aunt that I am, I am taking my nephews with me.

They are brothers’ kids. They’re like 13 and nine or something. I don’t know.

They’re kids, but not like babies. I’m a great aunt.

How old are they?

Couldn’t tell you. No idea.

But I am a fantastic aunt.

Let me tell you that. So I book flights for the three of us to go to this wedding and then come back.

You are also going to this wedding with your kids, so the whole idea is they’re all going to have a little cousin’s party in the hotel while we go to this wedding. Okay, great. I booked the flights.

Then, you booked your flights and I was trying to… So originally, I was going to go on Thursday, then we’re going to go on Friday and be on the same flight as you. Fun, fun, extra fun.

So I call Delta and I move the flights from Thursday, which is when our mother is flying, to Friday when my sister is flying. And we book our flights indirect. I’m like, we’ll connect through Minneapolis.

We’ll be on your flight. The boys can all sit together. They’ll all arrive together.

We’re locked in. This is like, you’re texting, you even text Matthew to make sure I can’t mess it up. And trust me, I knew why you looped him in.

I knew it was a fail safe. It was a, you were like, can’t trust her, but I can trust this man. Yes, we did it.

If I tell him, I even sent calendar invites to every single person, our brother, our sister-in-law. You, Matthew, our mother, with all the flight information, talking flight numbers. I’m talking airport codes, okay?

It was chef’s kiss. Okay, fast forward to last weekend, I get a note from Delta that says, hey girl, you’ve been upgraded. You’ve been upgraded to first class.

And I’m like, well, sick, but sadly, Delta, I cannot accept. I’m the best aunt in the world. I have to sit with my nephews.

So I call, and I’m like, I can’t do this. I’m flying with my nephews. And they’re like, no, you’re not.

They’re flying on Thursday. And I was like, wait, what? So it turns out that when I called the first time, somehow the person said that she had quote unquote connected all of our flights, but she had connected the nephews with mom, not with me.

This is even better than I thought. Oh, yeah.

So what was about to happen if I wasn’t able to fix all of these flights is that mom would have flown with the nephews and just had to entertain them for like a day and a half because we wouldn’t have gotten there until almost the end of the day

Friday. Yeah. Okay. Let’s add some complication to this sauce.

I paid for one of the kids flights, but then used a companion ticket for the other flight. Airlines are all weird about which flights you’re allowed to use companion tickets on. Yeah.

So she’s trying to get the boys on to our flight on Friday, but she’s like, I can’t because there’s no more companion seats allowed. Not only that, now that I’ve started to change your booking, you’ve lost your return flight.

You guys are going to be on a different flight coming. It was an absolute nightmare. So now we’re not flying with anyone.

We get there earlier than you, we leave earlier than you. And there’s just not a darn thing I can do about it. All the Delta status in the world means-

Won’t help you now. Won’t help me now. So what do I have to do?

I have to text my sister who I’ve roast mercilessly for her inability to understand how calendar works. And I have to just eat a big old piece of humble pie.

But imagine if I wouldn’t have gotten upgraded, I never would have called to decline, and I never would have known, and I would have shown up to the airport, and we would have not had a flight. With their little bags and their big eyes. Yep.

Oh my God. What’s happening, Auntie Maggie? What do you mean?

Oh no. Oh no. No, and if I can handle a lot of things, I think disappointing William and Stephen, it would end it for me.

Yeah. I’m not going to do that. Disappointing your own children, one thing.

Disappointing your nieces and nephews. Yeah. It just hits a little different.

It hits a little different. You’re like, oh, it really does.

Oh.

Well, I think it was very brave of you to share that. I think it’s very brave of you to admit it. You, I haven’t seen you make a lot of mistakes.

I don’t know if I’ll recover ever.

I booked a flight, booked her flight for the wrong weekend initially.

So, you know. It’s a gift that can happen.

It’s a gift, it’s a gift. Not everyone can do it, but I can. So I look forward to seeing you for 36 hours this weekend.

Yeah, well, I’ll be there before you and I will leave before you. So just maximize every moment you can get with me. And hope that all the rest of our flights are fine.

I hope your flights are fine. Have you checked? As a Type A, how are you recovering from this?

Like from walking on the wild side? Walking on the chaotic side? I don’t like it here.

I don’t like it on this side. I want to go home to where things happen like they’re supposed to. This is not supposed to be my life.

I can tell you don’t belong here, and I don’t think I’ll see you here again. I’ll be honest. I’m on my knees in the rain, arms to the sky, screaming, no.

Never again. Please, God, please, please. Why?

Please, please, please.

Okay, well, I love you.

I’ll see you this weekend. I think I’m gonna call mom and roast her. I’m gonna get my Type B origin story.

She is the OG Type B. That is true. Okay, okay.

Actually, okay. So my mom, some of my favorite Type B stories about mom. Have you talked about the fact that she would consistently wear one earring?

And we would ask her, mom, where’s your other earring? Oh, I don’t know. I lost it.

But she would wear the other one because she didn’t want to lose the other one. So she just looked like a pirate. I’ll just wear one earring.

I’ll just wear one earring. I don’t know where the other one is, but I have this one, so I’m going to wear this one. Okay.

Yeah. In high school, our little brother, out of nowhere, I mean, he used caulk to attach a plastic turtle to the hood of her car like a hood ornament. And she said, cute, fun.

She drove around like that. I was horrified. She loved that thing.

Yeah. She loved it. She thought it was so funny.

And I was like, drop me off a block away from school, but you can’t do that because I go to school on Nicollet Island. So drop me off on a bridge. I would rather be dropped off on a bridge than that.

Like, I did not appreciate, I did not appreciate that. It was hard to appreciate her weirdness as a teenager. Like now it’s cool, but at the time you’re like, can you just be normal like Tammy’s mom?

Be like Tammy’s mom. Okay, why, why are you like this? Just, I remember being at swimming, hair frozen, it’s winter in Minnesota.

My college coach, my college age coach is like, okay, I can’t leave till all the kids are picked up. She’s standing outside, like waits a Friday night, just wants to go get lit. Where’s my mom?

Mom comes rolling in, okay? Just, sorry, sorry, dad thought, I thought dad was picking you up, acting like they’re divorced parents who’ve never spoken, not like, who communicate like through a lawyer. Like you guys lived together, you didn’t know.

Who would pick us up tonight? Like one time she forgot to pick me up from school in, this is not going to mean anything to people not in Minneapolis, but school was in St. Anthony Village, right?

Just like right outside of Northeast Minneapolis. And we lived like in the heart of Northeast Minneapolis. It was probably, I want to say two, maybe three miles.

I had to walk home. I think it was in third grade. I just hoofed it home because she forgot to pick me up after basketball.

The 80s, that was perfectly acceptable. Now she would be in prison. She’d be in prison.

Yeah, that’s true. But in the 80s, if you watch a movie like ET., those kids are alone the entire summer. That’s my childhood.

You’re just like, enjoy yourself. There’s some snacks in the fridge. I’ll be home from work at five.

Yeah. Sorry I forgot to pick you up. You’re in third grade.

What do you want from me? Sorry I’m not perfect. Sorry I’m not perfect.

One time I dropped Ralph off at school and I was like, wow, I’m here early. This is crazy. I’m doing great.

Drop him off. I’ve got to drive all the way to St. Paul from Golden Valley.

Again, won’t mean anything to people outside of Minneapolis, but it’s a long drive. It’s in rush hour traffic. It’s like, this is the most hellish part of my life too.

I’m driving constantly making this podcast that I have to be in a studio to make. Like, what? I get a call.

I’m like, almost there. Okay? I’ve got a meeting.

It’s a teacher in service. And he’s at school alone. I wasn’t early.

I was the only person doing drop off. Did not pick up on that context clue. And he’s wandering the school looking for, he finds the janitor.

Okay? Okay. I’m like, how are we supposed to do this?

Okay. How am I supposed to do this? Okay.

I have news for you. Yeah. Speaking of Type B origin stories, our aunt Rita did the exact same thing to Lil and Fuzz.

Dropped them off at school on a non-school day. Just peeled out.

It happens.

It happens. It happens. We come by it honest.

This is how it happens. Okay. This is how it happens.

Okay. I love you.

I hope you recover.

I hope you get back into your routine. I hope you update your calendar to indicate that we spoke today. And, you know, it’s a…

Now you know how I live my life. It never feels good. I’ll leave you with this.

Because we’re going to a wedding this weekend, I didn’t want to paint my nails on Sunday because they wouldn’t be fresh. So I put a clear coat on Sunday, and I will be doing my nails for real tomorrow night so that they are fresh. Oh, okay.

I’m going to do mine tonight? Okay. I don’t know, because we have to leave at 6 a.m.

on Friday. So I’m like, I don’t know if I’ll have enough time. Like, I don’t want to sleep on them and get like sheet marks in them.

Seshvit.

Yeah.

Yeah. Gives you no sheet marks. No sheet marks.

And I always use that, but also sometimes I think I’m sloppy. I’m sloppy. I put it on too soon.

If you put the Seshvit on too soon, it will, it will crumble still. You have to still wait. That’s incorrect, but I will, I’ll, maybe I believe you.

Just don’t sleep as hard as me. I sleep like this, nails down.

Clutching the pillow.

Clutching. That’s how I sleep.

And then my nails are messed up. Okay, I love you.

Yeah, I don’t know.

Bye. Okay, bye.

I make some food so I stay alive. And there’s, I took a frozen piece of mystery meat out of the freezer and put it in a frying pan with some water and some olive oil. And now I just chop some onions and throw it in there.

That’s so great. Okay. And that’s-

I’m honestly, I’m so impressed that you could even pull that out of that fridge because I’ve seen that fridge.

And every time I go to your fridge, I’m like, wow, there’s one lonely egg.

There’s three in there now, but I ate, I won this morning with some- I just can’t even go into it. It’s just ridiculous.

How are you so- how am I so white and you are so-

Because I have a spray tan, babe. So- I have a spray tan.

So colorful.

Let’s just say colorful.

I mean, look at me. I have a spray tan.

I look like I’ve just been exhumed.

I’m so glad we- I’m so glad that we exhumed you for this reason. Because I’m making-

so I’m making a podcast episode about like how- about type B people. And I was raised by a type B and a type A.

And who do you think won the battle?

I don’t know what-

Of nature and nurture.

I don’t know what those types are. Just a minute. I look terrible.

You don’t know what a type A person is?

That’s like someone who likes to get shit done.

Yeah. I think I need to- are you ready for this?

My rummage sale?

Oh boy. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Oh cute. I like that.

It’s a little big.

It’s a little big.

I like that.

Nora, you are missing the greatest rummage sale in the world. Next year, you’ve got to be there. There was a set of eight martini glasses with polka dots on them.

I did not buy them. There was so much great stuff. So, so much.

Next year, I’m going to come in and help you get set up too.

I love that. So I loved helping with the Christmas one.

That was fun. I mean, and then Peggy Keene is running the Oval Room. And she said, Father Joe told this grieving widower, whose wife’s funeral was today with 800 people, that he could bring all of her clothes to the rummage sale.

I mean, Father Joe.

What’s he going to do with them? Okay, clear it out. Clear it out.

She’s not even in the grave yet. She’s not even in the grave. And Father Joe is thinking about the rummage sale, and God bless him for it, okay?

Like, I couldn’t help but notice as I looked into the casket, the woman had taste. Is there more where that came from?

Well, that’s what Peggy said.

Could we get it in the rummage sale?

The clothes are really great. And I said, what size are they? But I did get that J.

Crew Italian boiled wool jacket.

Oh, beautiful. Okay, so we’re talking about being type B, and you’re pretending like you don’t know what that means, and I admire that in you because type A is Dad, doing his laundry separately from us.

All right, so what’s type B? Me?

Me and you, babe.

What does type B do, though? I thought we like to get shit done. We take charge, except we’re very easily distracted.

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it.

Okay, it’s not like a type B is a loser, okay? You and I are both people who know how to get things done. We just might get it done in a different way.

Very different way.

We might get it done on a different day.

We might be quite late. We might be uncomfortably early. We might be turning the camera towards some herbs for some reason.

I had to bring all my plants in from the balcony because the person who’s going to water them is not reliable.

So anyway.

Oh, anyways.

Okay. All right. So I’ll listen now.

I’ll listen now. Okay.

Okay. So my type, I think my type the origin story is you. And I love it.

Like I think that it gives a little flair to people’s lives. I think it gives a little fun, a little flavor.

I think that being a kid and knowing, you know, that my mom and my aunt were going to take us on a road trip and not knowing if we would stay in a motel where we could all be murdered in the middle of the night.

Motel hell. Yeah. The Daniels Motel.

Yeah.

No one has those memories except for us. Okay. We, we, you know, we would be in the back seat of Rita’s Toyota Tercel, unbuckled in the way back, unbuckled, getting 25 cent cones from McDonald’s.

And you guys would lick off the top so they wouldn’t. It was, it was so lovely. It was so fun.

But people are horrified that I drive around with a regular coffee mug and I say, I got that from my mom. Like that’s just what you do.

I sent you a picture of the one I just had took to the other day. You know why? Because I hate driving, drinking out of one of those things where you have to like, move a little thing and then do this.

I don’t, yes, I fully agree.

Because part of the joy of drinking coffee, especially strong coffee with half and half in it or heavy cream.

The only kind, the only kind we like.

Just actually seeing the color of the coffee.

Well, yeah, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to move a lid.

I just don’t. I don’t want to drink out of something with a lid if I don’t have to. I just like it better out of a ceramic cup, and I think that’s fine and that’s normal.

But you don’t, so you don’t consider yourself type B? Like type B, type A is Megan, always having a schedule. Type B.

No, that’s not me.

That’s totally not me. Totally not me.

Right. Type, type B is pulling up late to get us from swimming and being like, sorry.

I can’t remember.

Miscommunication. I thought your dad was doing this.

Type B is also the type of person who says, what if, what if we did this? Yeah. That this would be way more fun.

So we’re going to do that.

Yeah. I think that’s magical. I think that’s great.

Why take the interstate, which is frankly so boring, you would fall asleep at the wheel.

Instead of like taking that old road, the Lincoln Highway, okay? That runs parallel to the expressway through Nebraska. And have you read that book, The Lincoln Highway?

I haven’t, no.

Is it by Eric Larson?

No, it’s by this guy, Amor Towles or something. He also wrote…

Oh, I can see the cover of it, and I can see his name.

Everybody was reading The Man in Moscow or something like that, and I sort of have this thing where if everybody’s reading it, I don’t want to read it. So I didn’t read that one, but I picked up Lincoln Highway and it was excellent.

And it was about the highway that actually was one of the first interstates that ran from New York all the way to California. And parts of it still are used.

Yeah. Okay. All right.

Well, and what were you doing when I called you were?

Well, they sort of finished my bathroom, but they hung the shower rod up way too high. You gotta stand in your tiptoes to put the thing up. You’re gonna have to lower it.

They’re just gonna have to lower it.

I feel bad. They’re going to, yeah.

I feel bad. And I’m trying to finish packing because I leave tomorrow. My lift is coming at 8 a.m.

Oh boy.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

So you’re leaving tomorrow, you’re packing, and you’re making dinner right now.

Well, I’m making something. I should probably look at it. Hold on a second.

I’ll be right back. Oh, BRB. All right, I just turned it down.

I just turned it down. Otherwise, I could have a Clif Bar for dinner.

Okay, well, I was just calling to say, like, you know, I appreciate, a lot of people, a lot of type Bs get a lot of shit, okay? And I get a lot of shit simply for being slightly unpredictable, for running out of gas, okay?

For maybe running a little bit late, sometimes running uncomfortably early, for, you know, just like being a little off.

But I think that, I don’t know, I think that’s what made you the fun parent and what made dad, you know, a little bit scary, was knowing this man wanted to do his laundry separate from ours, and this woman would let it pile up till it was a mountain

in the basement outside of the shoot. Type A is dad going through our house with a garbage bag, picking up all the flip flops I left all around. Type B is you walking in and just shedding all of your…

Got Nora. I have to tell you, I’m not going to burn my journals before I die.

But there’s many days that I have the shoe-o-meter in there, where I can say, look at it and go, Steve, I can see right now, there’s, within my line of vision, there’s four pair of shoes, plus one memory. And I’m sorry, Steve, I’m sorry.

I’m going to put them away right now.

Yeah. But you know, I think that gives a Type A person purpose in life, is to live with a Type B person who says, I’m not going to put my shoes away. I mean, I’ll attempt to.

I really hope to. I would love to, but…

Well, there’s always a reason why you have the shoes. Like you’re wearing a pair and you come in and you kick them off and they’re by the door, and then you need to do something else. So you slip into another pair of shoes.

Yeah.

And then you don’t want to…

Yeah.

Don’t you tell me. I get it.

You don’t want to track into a bedroom on a nice rug with that pair of shoes, so you leave them by the door.

Exactly. Exactly.

So…

Exactly. I get it.

Doors and shoes.

I get it.

Doors and shoes.

I get it.

Well, I think there’s a certain spontaneity that comes with being a Type B as well. You can be well on your way to doing errand number one, but then you see a sign that says, Estate Sale. You know, and so…

You gotta stop.

You gotta stop.

You gotta stop.

You gotta stop.

Maybe you’re, you know, maybe you don’t really have a schedule. But you know, there’s several types of Type B, I think. And one type is when you’re a parent with children and a job and yadda de yadda de yadda da.

That’s one kind of Type B. But then there’s another type of Type B. When you’re not working, don’t have any schedule.

And nothing to kind of, not tie you down. That’s not the right word, but nothing to kind of order your days. So you have to kind of create this semblance of a routine, but not too much.

Not too much, because that’s boring, that’s boring.

You have to have like a little playtime in there. You do.

And actually, I think something that is like, I think most Type A people would not be able to do, which is one of your strengths, is that every summer, when we were little, like you were a freelancer, and you would take the summer off, and we would

I deliberately did that.

Yeah, I think that’s so cool.

And I think a Type A person who was really, really dialed it, like dad never took time off to hang out with us, you know what I mean? He was like stressed, gotta work, gotta do this. And we literally did not know where the days would take us.

We did not know what would happen in a summer, and it was always a wild adventure. And I don’t think a Type A person would bring their children to a drive-through petting zoo in the Ozarks, have their child be bit by a baby bear.

I know, wasn’t that incredible? Well, and then the 15-passenger van where we just throw the fruit snacks back.

A Type A person is not going to put six children in a 15-passenger van and drive from Minnesota to Arkansas with no set schedule. That’s just not going to happen.

And then I think we had to pull over in Carthage, Missouri because we were hydroplaning on the road because it was raining.

And you know what? None of us registered that we were in danger on death’s doorstep. We were like, we’re on an adventure with our moms.

Our dads don’t know where we are. And it’s really none of their business. So what I’m saying, mom, is like in defense of Type B is you really are, you really were the blueprint baby.

I’m glad to be cut from the same cloth.

Maybe I should monetize this.

You got to monetize this. Okay, you’ve got to.

You know why?

You got to monetize.

It takes too much effort actually right now. It takes too much effort.

Very relatable. We would love to monetize this. We would love to monetize your specific brand of Joie de Vivre, but we’re going to get distracted.

It’s called benign neglect.

Benign neglect.

Okay, I love you. I’ll see you at the wedding.

All right.

So yeah, is being a Type B contagious? Perhaps. Do people not fall squarely into a binary?

Maybe, but for the purposes of this episode, there are only two kinds of people. There are Type A people and there are Type B people. Somebody recently tried to tell me about a Type C person.

I’m not interested in that. I don’t want that kind of content. I just want to say, there’s two kinds of people in this world.

There’s me and then there’s everybody else. And if my sister after 50 years on this planet, 42 of them with me in her life can go from being a Type A to exhibiting extremely alarming Type B behavior, I just think that it could happen to anybody.

So if you are a Type A and you are listening to this, I want you to stay vigilant. I want you to keep your head on straight because the rest of us will not be doing that. I want you to pay attention to details because I’m not going to.

And if you find yourself in the kind of situation that a Type B belongs to, I want you to know that there is no hope for you. You are one of us now and it’s all over.

All right, let’s play a voicemail.

Hi, Nora. I saw your post and I have a really good one for you. Type B content here.

So my car driver seat has not locked for the past three years. The funny thing is I bought the car piece to replace it. I took it to one mechanic and he said, Oh, hey, you know, I can’t fix this.

And then after that, I don’t know why I just forgot about the piece. And at the time, I was living with my parents and I think my mom threw away the car part.

And it’s been three years of me driving around the city with my front door that doesn’t lock. And nothing has been stolen so far. I always take my rally pools and people say that I have good karma, but I think it’s time to buy the car part again.

Right? Yeah.

I love that. I think that’s perfect. You know what?

If it’s broken, it’s been broken for three years, nothing bad has happened. Why fix it, is what I say. OK, here’s a good one.

Grocery shopping with an allergy ridden nose, didn’t have any tissues, started blowing my nose with one of my son’s diapers, immediately ran into someone I knew while holding the diaper to my face. Amen.

I once took my baby boy to a baby mom yoga class. I got there, he immediately blew out his diaper. I opened my bag, I did not have a single diaper.

I did not have a single outfit, so I had to strip him down, wipe him down with other people’s wipes. What was in this bag, this diaper bag? Not a single diaper, not a single wipe, not a single outfit, literally nothing that we needed.

Thank God for other moms, prepared moms who gave me butt wipes so I could basically bathe my child in the middle of this yoga class, an extra diaper, and shout out to the mom who gave me a dress and a pair of leggings to put on him because it was

winter. I don’t even know if she ever got that dress and leggings back, but he looked so beautiful in them. And yeah, so yeah, blowing your nose into a diaper, that’s called innovation. That’s what that is called.

Type B Confession.

My very best friend in the whole entire world is moving to Phoenix and I alternate between crying about it and blocking it out so much that her going away party was last Saturday and I was an hour late because I was so confident it was Sunday and

didn’t think to check out until 7.45 on Saturday. And sure enough, it was indeed on Saturday and I was one and a half hours late and left two hours later because I have anemia, and I get tired.

Also in general, feeling overwhelmed by my own type B-ness because I have months worth of clean laundry and I just cannot be bothered to put it away. I keep buying hangers and organizational solutions, but it is all in piles.

That is a tight beacon under my love, believing that I am one organizational system, one planner, one app away from world domination. And everything could change if I had just one little thing. And maybe I’ll buy the thing, but will I use the thing?

I can’t promise that I will. But I know the feeling of being very, very confident in the timing of something. So the call that I didn’t record was very similar.

This woman had gone to Iowa. Her friend who lived out of state was having a wedding reception. She had already been married.

This is a friend who has been everybody else’s bridesmaid. She’s finally married. She’s having a wedding reception in Iowa.

All the friends go. It’s in this small town, like Bridges of Madison County vibes. Everybody is having fun.

They’re telling the wedding guests, oh, there’s a spelling bee today. Go check it out. There’s a market today.

Go check it out. So this woman and her friends, they go do check out all of this stuff. They go check it all out.

The bride calls them around like 3, around like 2 p.m. They’re like, okay, the event starts at 3. The bride calls them and says, like, where are you?

She’s not mad. She’s just like, where are you guys? The event stops at 3.

It ends at 3. It ends at 3. It doesn’t begin at 3.

It ends at 3. I do that all the time.

I will believe in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, the time of something, and it won’t be even remotely correct, but somehow that time has infiltrated my subconsciousness, and I believe that to be the time with no evidence, no paper trail

whatsoever. I’ll be like, let me pull this up. No, nothing, nothing about this says that the event would start at 3 p.m., and yet I believe in my heart that it starts at 3 p.m. So I feel that.

I feel that kind of time stuff. Okay, here’s another one. I am type B.

We have baskets in the entryway for keys and such, yet at any given time, my keys could be anywhere. In a purse, in a pocket, on the kitchen table, on the floor, or, my husband’s favorite, still in the car. I say this all the time.

If you want to keep your mind sharp, you have to be putting things in a different place every day. Sure, you could put your keys in the same basket when you walk in the house. Sure, you could keep them in the same place in your purse.

I say, personally, if you want to keep your mind sharp, if you want to keep yourself on your own toes, put your stuff in a different place every single time. And then try to think who you were when you walked in the door last. Who were you?

Were you a person who was putting your keys in a basket? No, check there. Were you a person who was putting your keys on the kitchen counter?

Maybe. Kitchen table? No, that wasn’t it.

Are you a person who carried your keys, for some reason, into your closet, reached into your sock door to get new socks, and then set your keys down in the sock door? Because that’s who I am most of the time.

I have to go on a magical mystery tour to figure out where I could have set something, where it could be. So I love that. And I think people like that about us.

I think it makes us fun. I think it makes us exciting. I think we bring the spice to life.

In college, I showed up to a morning class I enjoyed and always went to on time. As I approached the room and went to open the door, I simultaneously realized I was 40 minutes late as I made eye contact with the professor. I fled the scene.

Fled the scene. Made eye contact, fled the scene. This was 14 years ago and I’m still astounded how I thought I was on time until that moment.

I learned what time blindness was yesterday and I’ve never fit a description more. Yeah, okay, time blindness, time blindness. This is what we’re talking about.

I definitely have time blindness. The inability to sense how much time has passed and estimate the time needed to get something done. It includes challenges involving time estimation, scheduling, and recognizing time-related cues.

This is me. Over here, I have calendar pages, giant ones on the wall. Calendar pages right here in front of me.

Calendar widget on my laptop right in front of me. Several different calendar widgets right here on my phone. I will still be absolutely shocked when I’ll see the date, right?

Dates right here, dates right here, dates right here. What day is it? What month is it?

It’s very, do I have time? Do I still have time? That is the question I ask myself every day.

Do I still have time? So if you have time blindness, and you’re not alone. Baby, I’m here.

I got my glasses on. I still couldn’t tell you what time it is, what day it is, what day of the week it is. It’s Wednesday.

No, it’s Thursday.

Oh, my God.

But it feels like a Wednesday, and that’s hard to explain, is that sometimes it feels like a Wednesday, and it’s not. Okay. Type B extrovert here.

I’m notorious about meeting people and getting their number, but not entering their name in my contacts. I’ve agreed to meet up at events from sunset paddleboarding to city council events with no idea who I’m meeting. I love you.

I love you. No idea who I’m meeting. I made plans.

I’m gonna meet this person. They are simply a phone number to me. I’m gonna meet this person.

Sometimes it’s a person I just met, and sometimes it’s a college friend I haven’t talked to in years. It’s a great surprise. I’ve never told them that I didn’t know who it would be.

That’s beautiful. This is what I mean when I say some people bring the spice to life. Some people add the flavor.

That’s not even a flavor that I knew existed. That is umami right there. That’s beautiful.

Beautiful.

Okay.

Hello, Nora Type B here.

In college, I lost my wallet. I didn’t bother to replace anything because I knew it would turn up eventually. I don’t know how long it was, but it was definitely days.

I moved my car for the first time in a while, and my wallet was under—. My wallet was underneath my tire. That was proof I could survive and perhaps thrive as a Type B human.

It takes me a while to replace something. If I’ve lost my wallet or lost it, I just say, I just, I gotta trust, it’s gonna turn up.

And also a rule of life is that if you do replace it, if you call and you say cancel that, cancel that credit card, the minute you cancel it, you’ll find it. So we have a new place to look. If you’ve missed something, look under your tires.

That’s so, I’m reading all of these. I read these all blind for the first time as we’re recording, and I’m so glad because that was such a treasure. Thank you for that one.

I told my husband about this and he said, this is your whole life. Your whole life is type B. Most recently, I spent a Thursday confidently and cheerfully wishing all 100 families in the child care center I manage a happy weekend.

That doesn’t shock me. That doesn’t shock me. I would do that.

I would do that. And then someone would say, it’s Thursday, right? But the weekend is sort of starts on Friday, so shut up.

Okay. Seriously, at least one thing a week happens. I show up for meetings way too early or too late, forget to pick up everything, one time went to the same store three times in one day because I don’t need a shopping list.

Me too. I’ve been to a specific store twice this week. I’ve been two days in a row.

I’ve not gotten the one thing that I need. The one thing I go there for, I keep walking out without. And I’m going to have to write it on my hand because that is the only thing that works for me.

This is very typey. I don’t carry a purse and I lose credit cards monthly. I haven’t had a physical driver’s license since last May because I lost it.

I avoid holiday gas stations in Minnesota because they don’t have Apple Pay and I lost all my cards. My car is so messy, I’m terrified coworkers will ask me for a ride. But also, that has perks.

My kid forgot her coat for school today. She’s sick, so we just dug in the back. We found something that sort of fit.

I’m not even totally sure it was hers. Maybe it was a friend’s. Maybe it was my nephew’s.

I’m getting better at this, but I used to routinely run out of gas due to not paying attention to the gas gauge. I think cars should be screaming at you if you’re about to run out of gas.

Don’t trust me to be looking, monitoring, seeing how much we have. Like, even if it’s a giant number and, like, the display screen says, like, 10, I don’t know how much 10 miles is. I need a car to yell at me and say, there’s a gas station.

Pull over right now. Get gas right now. You want me to look at a gauge and then gauge how long I have until I run out, because one time it said 10 miles.

One time it said five miles. It was a rental car. It said five miles.

And it just stopped working. So it’s not even an accurate estimate, okay? I thought it would be sort of tricking you into thinking you had less gas than you have.

No, this one, I was tricked into thinking I had more gas than I had and I had to walk a mile and a half each way with a gallon of gas. Okay, so things happen. Okay.

One time, because I only had loose change in my messy car, I got a few bucks of gas in a borrowed gas can, paying only with change. Used to be you could pay for gas all in change, okay?

When I started driving and gas was like a dollar a gallon, handful of change was all you needed, okay? Okay, that’s all for now. Going to go look for my credit card.

Good luck. Good luck and thank you for sharing this. I see you.

As far as Type B behavior, last spring, I got a reputation amongst friends for going to a party in a complete other part of the city for me the wrong week. Oh, okay. In one month, I did it twice.

Once the week before and once the week after. So two weeks in a row going to a party on the other side of the city on the wrong week. Confidently wrong both times.

I just did it again about a year later with one of the same friends this weekend. I also often visit a friend in New York and book a train the day of or day before and it really stresses her out. Yeah, okay.

That’s what we do. We stress people out. We stress people out and we confidently believe that we know the time and date and we might not.

My neighbor came up to me and told me that they were going to get someone to carve into a tree stump that is on our property line.

The stump is 90% in their yard, so I wasn’t really paying attention and pretty much told them they can do whatever because it’s their property. Well, now, we have this lovely thing to look at.

If you’re listening on audio, please, please, please, go to the Substack post because we’re posting a picture of this sculpture, this tree trunk sculpture that is in her yard. It. I would do this too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I read the instructions. No, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m listening. I’m listening, I’m listening.

Yeah, yeah, make a sculpture. I don’t know if it’s a merman, it’s Fabio, it’s, it seems very sexy for a tree stump sculpture in a yard, but that’s just coming from me. A dweeb and a prude, okay.

Type B mom initially texted this list to the wrong number. That’s my girl. What does that person think?

That person thinks, honestly, they’re probably like, this is the weirdest phishing scam ever. Why am I getting a text like this? Okay.

Type B list from a Type B mom of three. We have a collective kid sock bin and socks are not placed in pairs because they are not meant to be monogamous. I despise socks and matching socks sucks.

Did Dr. Seuss write that sentence? I despise socks and matching socks suck.

I despise socks matching socks suck. That’s true. That’s true.

I love this. Birthday gifts are always wrapped by kids in newspaper. My mom did this.

My mom classic Type B, but beautiful. I love this. Or any ridiculous artwork we find laying around the house, never looking crisp.

Why crisply wrap a gift that’s just going to be unopened? Okay. It’s the thought that counts and the thought is, I found this newspaper.

I love it. Multiple junk drawers and costume bins and ridiculous outfit drawers because dressing up is for everyone. You’re not a Type B mom, you’re a magical mom.

Okay. Now I’m almost mad at you. I plant a garden and don’t know what I was planning to grow every year.

Perfect. Meal planning? Never done it.

I prefer to play Iron Chef at 5 p.m. when we all get home. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Our home isn’t ever clean.

It’s a sandy frat house kitchen floor, but it’s the house the neighbor gang convenes at, and for that, I relish the dog hair in the corners and the cheese that I often find between couch cushions. Like I said, this is a magical woman.

This is a magical mother. I bow down. I would rather have everybody at my house having fun.

And yeah, a little bit of cheese between the couch cushions than a perfect aesthetic home. And I love the idea of a massive sock bin. Like, yeah, just go find two socks, okay?

Like, sorry, a sock doesn’t have a mate. A sock is ethically non-monogamous. I love that.

Okay.

I forgot to hit record when I was talking to the person who sent this text message.

So just imagine her telling you this, because this is the only audio that I captured. Um, Annaleigh just told a great story. We just talked for 15 minutes.

She has to go. I didn’t hit record. So me, four adult friends and our three young kids drove four or so hours from Minneapolis to the Des Moines, Iowa area for a marriage celebration for our college friend who lives in Alaska, who we rarely see.

We rented a house and spent two nights. We attended a pre-party on Friday night and spent most of Saturday at the local town’s annual festival and collectively completely spaced on the time of the actual party and missed it entirely.

Our to be celebrated friend texted us after to ask what we were up to and we were about to text that we were on our way when we realized we had completely missed it. Completely mortified and there were type A’s among us.

It was some sort of bystander effect. Oops. This goes back to what I was saying with my sister.

If you are a type A, you do need to remain vigilant. You need to remain vigilant because the type B’s among you might lull you into a full sense of safety. When we say, don’t worry about it, worry about it.

When we say we got it, we absolutely don’t. When we say, oh, don’t sweat the small stuff, you better be sweating the small stuff. You better be drenched in sweat about the small stuff because we are not.

So this episode was dedicated to our type B girlies, but I know that there are all kinds of people, all kinds of people out there hearing this. And I hope that if you are a type B, if you believe yourself to be a type C, I don’t want to hear it.

But if you are a type B, I hope you feel celebrated. I hope you feel seen. If you are a type A, I hope you feel slightly stressed out, but also superior.

I hope this gave you, like, reinforced a superiority complex in you. And I hope it made you laugh at the way that you would never, in a million years, move through this world.

In reality, I know that there are more than two types of people in the world, but I really like pretending that there’s only two, just for the sake of a podcast, just to lighten it up and let us have a little bit of a giggle.

This is Thanks For Asking. We are a call-in show about what matters to you, so we’d love getting your calls and texts. You can still send us type B stories.

You can send us stories about anything from any of our past episodes. The phone number is 612-568-4441. I mentioned in this episode that there will be a picture of this tree stump.

All of those details, that kind of stuff, that’s over on the Substack. We don’t have Apple Plus anymore. We don’t have Patreon.

We have noraborialis.substack.com. It’s linked in the description. That’s where the ad-free episodes are, bonus episodes, our entire archive.

That’s where I write every week. It’s a nice little community because if you want to comment, you’re a paid commenter, which means you’re invested and you are not a troll.

Obviously, not everybody can contribute to every single thing that they listen to or enjoy. I fully get that. Don’t worry, there will always be plenty of stuff for free because I am bad at business.

And that’s something that I’m actually kind of proud of. I’m a type B girl who has somehow like maintained a career for 10 years while being just like absolutely bad at business and being like, honestly, just have it. I don’t know.

What’s the cost? It’s probably free. Like, you know what?

Who knows? Literally one of the worst salespeople. I am Tommy Boy, but you can join monthly, you can join annually, which like saves you money.

And if you want to kick in extra dollars, you can join at the supporting producer level, which gets your names in the credit.

So while I always thank Marcel Malekibu, who is our wonderful, very gifted producer, and I thank Grace Berry, who does literally everything else for us.

And I thank Joffrey Lamar Wilson, who made our opening theme music a million years ago and also has a great band called Lamar. Go stream them. And I thank my young son Q, who made this closing theme music that you are listening to right now.

I will also be thanking our supporting producers, Jordan Jones, Sheila, Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey DeMoro, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer

McDagle in all caps, Elia Feliz-Milan, Lindsay Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Sirnick, Car Pan, LGS all caps, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, my high school gym teacher, Jothia Disopolis, Hot Young Widow, Mad, Abby Arouse,

A-R-A-U-Z. You got it, Mad, if I’m doing this wrong, you got to tell me. Elizabeth Berkeley, Kim F, Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica Latexier, Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Beyer-Zone, Erin John,

Joy Pollock. Thank you to Jordan Jones. Thank you to Sheila and thank you to Kathleen Langerman.

Crystal, Jennifer Pavelka, Jess Blackwell, Micah, Jessica Reed, Beth Lippem, Kiara, Joe McDonald, Jen Grimlin, Alexis Lane, David Binkley, Kathy Hamm, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Jeremy Essen, Hot Young Widow, Anna Brzezinski, Robin Ruhlard,

Nicole Petey, Monica, Caroline Moss, Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Henny Pesta, Kaylee, Dave Gilmore, and Jacqueline Ryder. Thank you so much for being here. We’ll be back again next week.

And stay chaotic, my babies.