| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | I was eleven years old the first time I realized I was athletic and scored three touchdowns the first game of the season. This is likely my fondest memory as a kid; my family was going crazy from the sidelines. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | My father. The older I get, the more I realize I am just the same person living in a different generation, although I'm a bit more gregarious. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | Sincerity, fortitude, leadership, perseverance, alpha-mentality, temperance and a sense of humor. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I don't exactly know if this qualifies as the funniest thing that's ever happened to me, but it is one of the funniest memories I have from my childhood. Let me preface by saying the kids across the street from where I grew up are still my best friends to this day. I'll change their names for anonymity, so we'll call them J and T. J was the older brother, only a couple months older than me, and was the more mature and relaxed of the two brothers. T was a hyper and rambunctious kid but he was definitely the creative one. Both of their parents worked during the day so often we'd have the house to ourselves. One day after tossing the football outside, when I was about ten years old, J and I came into the house to see that T had made a makeshift roller coaster on the stairs. See, the stairs were just one case leading straight to the ground without any curves or stops. He had lined the bottom with a wall of pillows before they ran into a column of banisters. The "car" was a large plastic storage container that had also been lined with pillows for support. At first it was actually relatively safe. We would slide straight down and collide with the pillow wall without breaking anything, and we even took pictures mid-ride to pretend it was like an actual roller coaster at a theme park. Then we got the bright idea of sliding down backwards. At first the only difference was that at the very end, no matter what, the rider would finish with his legs in the air and less stable than the original ride, but then the container started to fall apart. It cracked along the bottom and bent along the sides, and the rides started to get a bit bumpier until the one ride that would sear in my mind forever. J was lined up and ready to go but I hadn't finished walking up the stairs yet. T pushed him anyways and the break in the bottom of the car caught a combination of my foot, and the lip of a stair to send Jordan flipping backwards down the stairs with nothing to protect his neck. I'll never forget the sheer terror on his face, an expression of a kid that knew he was about to die, only resurfaced upright for a split second before he'd undergo another flip. Finally he toppled to the ground to a stop. Amazed that he survived unscathed, he started running around the house in celebration while T and I stood at the top of the stairs sighing with relief that we didn't just kill him. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | For beauty, I'd traverse the seldom-visited islands of Oceania. For curiosity, I'd like to tour the hermit kingdom of North Korea, since I studied it at great length. For adventure, I'd trek Peru for the ruins. For fun, I'd go to Austin, Texas. It is the live music capital of the world. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | My grandfather's ring, my parents' often under-appreciated sage advice, and less specifically, simply everything that I have to give. My parents put forth the best effort they possibly could, and my kids deserve nothing short of that. |
