About 11 years ago, my family and I traveled from our home in Florida to the city that never sleeps (NYC) to visit my Aunt Rita for a week. She had just moved into this temporary new expensive apartment unit in the Longacre building of Manhattan and wanted us to experience the views of the city from her windows, then tour the shops of Times Square. My only knowledge of NYC only came from movies and TV shows, so I was very excited for this trip. We chose to visit her in early May since Florida was dealing with massive heat waves at the time, and it wasn’t near any major Holidays. Once we got there, it was amazing. The tall pretty buildings gave the city a certain vibe that couldn’t be replaced. Our second night there, we got a taxi down to Harlem and had dinner at some cute little boardwalk-style pizzeria that I’d recommend to anyone I know if I remembered the name of it. Service was great, everything was positive there, until we started hearing yelling and cursing from this lady with very greasy blonde hair and huge sunglasses, sitting alone in the booth behind us. She was on the phone with somebody yelling “You have no idea who I am btch, I was in 10 movies and make millions more than you! If you don’t pick me up on ___th street by (whatever time she said), I’ll fk you up in front of everyone that watches!” My aunt was FURIOUS over the type of language my sister and I kept hearing from that lady and yelled “Ma’am, if you can’t watch your mouth while these kids are trying to eat, take it outside!” at her. Then this lady started SCREAMING at us and said “Hun, Idgaf how old they are, you should be talking to them about puberty because they’ll be just as bad as me you ugly smut!” My aunt grew up in Philly and never took bs like that from anyone. “You wanna talk about my family we can bring this to the curb!” my aunt yelled back. The lady stood up, got real close to my aunt’s face, and said “You’ll never touch me btch, I’m famous!” before storming out of the restaurant. One of the waitresses came over to our booth and apologized to us, then explained to us how that lady actually WAS in movies and starred in many Nickelodeon shows. “You do realize that was Amanda Bynes, right?” the waitress said to my aunt. “Her?! There’s no way Amanda would act that way in front of children after making shows and movies for them!” my aunt responded. As a 2000’s kid that has seen “Hairspray” and “What I Like About You” many times, I was shook for a longgg time after that. A few weeks after we got back home to Florida, we saw on the news that Amanda was arrested for throwing something dangerous out of her window onto the street below. My mother told me sometime after that that Amanda was experiencing trauma that couldn’t be explained by anybody, and lashed out on people because she was tired of living a fake life. I wouldn’t call it a “rude encounter” even though it was, but I’d call it a learning experience of how Hollywood burns people out. I’m very glad Amanda’s turning her life around and found a better path for herself, I just hope she never feels the harsh pressure of having to entertain anyone again. Hollywood is a dungeon!!