When I was very young I was watching a syndicated episode of, oh no, what's the name of the show?

It's one with Alan Thick and Mike Seaver the Sever family growing pains. That's growing pains, right? I think that's right. And yeah,

Kirk Cameron's in that and I remember Kirk Cameron who's older than me and you know I kind of you know taking some

cues from these characters on TV about how to get life right and get along with

parents and make girls like me and stuff and there's this scene that I remember where he doesn't know

that this girl that he kind of likes can see him from another part of the room

he thinks he's in there alone and there's his little baby in there and Kirk Cameron comes over and

he's like oh hi little baby and he's so gentle and nice and everything and then the

girl steps out the shadows from the closet or whatever and she's like,

ha, now I know things about you.

You're actually nice.

He's like, what, you were watching, what even happened there, what is that?

But no, he really wasn't playing a game, as I recall.

He was actually that revealed something about his soul and so he was seeking only the reward of making this little baby happy and and enjoying being around this adorable little kid.

But because someone saw what he did in secret,

he also received the reward of having his true character known

and getting the girl.

I could be botching that plot of that growing pains episode, but I think that's the girl. I could be botching that plot of that growing pains episode but I think

that's the gist, at least that's how I internalized it. But the screwed up thing about how I

internalized it is I was like okay I need to imitate that scenario I need to find situations where it seems like I don't know that other people are wait no this is screwed up and wrong and I honestly wrestled with that for a while as like a middle school kid in terms of this concept of do you do things that are right because they're right or do you do things that are right acting like you don't know other people are watching but secretly

hoping that other people are watching and surely I still don't have that figured out

I'm sure probably nobody has that completely figured out but that's the kind of

...