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Well, I've been teaching stress management
for a good thirty years,

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and I have to tell you:
People are going insane.

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(Laughter)

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It's just unbelievable, isn't it?

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I mean, I think about my origins.

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I'm a Sicilian girl from Brooklyn

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and was born into this Italian family
with a lot of drama

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A lot of drama, I mean, you know,
it's like an opera.

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You take the garbage out; you got it:
"Oh, taking the garbage out, oohhhhh!"

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And you have to kiss everybody,

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because you might not come back,

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who knows? 
(Laughter)

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But the word stress
didn't even exist then,

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nobody talked about stress.

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It was the Depression,
it was World War II.

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My grandmother had three sons in the army,

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and she was always suffering
because of that Sicilian martyrdom,

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every time I looked at her:
"Oh I suffer!"

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But we laughed a lot.

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You know what else we did?
We ate a lot.

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We ate, and when we were eating,
we practiced to eat again.

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We talked about eating all the time.

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We had some fun amidst the angst
that was going on.

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And people just seemed to roll
with the punches.

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I mean, they accepted the reality

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and they had a community of people
that helped them.

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They were called neighbors.
You remember them?

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(Laughter)

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Nobody comes to your house any more

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for a sausage or a meatball
(Laughter)

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because what if your LDL is too high?
(Laughter)

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or something might go wrong, you know,

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and who are these people, anyway?

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You see them coming to the door,

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you "Aaaah!"
(Laughter)

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"I don't want to see any people!
I have my show to watch tonight.

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The one with neighbors in it.

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(Laughter)

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I don't ever remember my grandmother
standing in front of the sink going:

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"Oh, Madonna mia, I'm so stressed!"
(Laughter)

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I can take it no more.
I got to go to my spin class.

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Maybe I forgot my kale smoothie
this morning (Laughter)

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and I don't know where my Fitbit is.
(Laughter)

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We have gotten to a place

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where we don't know
how to see humor in our lives

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because we don't have
those people stopping by --

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the characters that were once in my life,

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that provided me
with historical references

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that I could put in my books.

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We don't have those meals together
like we often did,

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where we talked and laughed
and shared stories,

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and if you acted up,
"Huh, lots of luck!"

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You got told "What's wrong with you?"

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And I went to Catholic school.

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I had the Sisters
of perpetual mood disorder.

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(Laughter)

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Trust me, they didn't like you
to get away with anything.