| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | At around 10 years old, my uncle gave me one of his old 35mm film cameras. Growing up, I was really into cars, so every car show, every vacation, every afternoon at the shore I would have my camera out and pointed at whatever car that caught my eye. One afternoon, I’m taking a picture of this black 55’ Thunderbird - top off, white walls, chrome rims with hundreds of little spokes that take all day to clean - when my sister takes the camera and opens the back, exposing all of my film from that day and the previous show. In the digital age, this would be the equivalent of deleting a batch of perfect selfies from the phone before the phone synced with the cloud. At that moment, I was distraught, it might as well have been if the world had ended. I was carrying on for days about this, until my Dad told me that those pictures will still be in my head, even if they don’t make it to film. As a child, I can’t say I understood quite what he was saying, but even at that age I understood he was trying to tell me something important. Since then, I’ve always made a point to take a mental picture before ever taking a physical one. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I closely identify with my mother. She taught me the importance of empathy, compassion, other important traits, but more than anyone else, she taught me how to cook. Every time I start the burner or pull a knife from the block, I can feel the room fill with the same love I sensed in her kitchen. I’m not saying my mother is a witch, but there is a magic to her food. Some telepathic séance turns seemingly ordinary ingredients into a witch’s brew that not only tastes amazing, but also reminds you that you’re loved. Some of that magic made its way towards me and I have no one else to thank for that other than her. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | As a baseline, I believe it’s most important to be nice and not be afraid – both of these simultaneously. On their own, “nice” is too boring and “fearless” is too reckless. Together though, I think they provide a unique combination that allows a person to be kind when others are not and take risks when they feel it can be benefit others. Other traits help define a person, but kindness and fearlessness should be the foundation the rest are built on. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | As a young kid, I would play outside with my neighbor and his cousin. There was a basket weave fence that separated our yards and with us being neighbors, it guaranteed that there was at least one yard that we wouldn’t have to sneak into to get our fly balls and wild passes. Anyway, one day, the three of us are playing three-man football. My neighbor played quarterback, his cousin played receiver, and I played defense. My neighbor threw this long pass behind the swing set and his cousin and I were so caught up in chasing this ball that we didn’t notice that the ball was going to land over the fence. CRASH! His cousin slams through the fence first, I trip and roll through second. Neither of caught the ball, but we couldn’t stop laughing. When my neighbor’s Dad comes outside to check on us, we all stopped, terrified at what would come next. What we didn’t expect was him to start laughing and charge through the same hole we did, shattering more boards in the process. We laughed about that day for months. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would circumnavigate the globe by sailboat in the longest, most circuitous path possible. There’s no need to race. I want to experience the ice-cap mountains of Norway’s Geirangerfjord, the nightlife of Hong Kong, the caldera that makes up the island of Santorini, every restaurant and Jazz bar in New Orleans. The limited cell reception would also make it incredibly difficult for others to reach me, which sounds beautiful, AND provide the perfect excuse to ignore their call, email, and/or text. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I believe it’s important to ensure that they learn empathy. High school me was friendly and kind; it’s how I was raised. Post-college me has been sincere and communicative; it’s what I’ve learned in professional life. College me was a jerk and it was entirely self-propelled. Living on my own, I was thinking about myself and no one else. I believed everyone thought, felt, did everything that I did. That self-centered mentality lead to many broken relationships, poor friendships, and animosity towards others and towards myself. For those reasons and more, I believe it’s important to teach my prospective children the importance of putting themselves in another’s shoes. |
