| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | I was on a robotics team sponsored by an aerospace company when I was in fifth grade. I don't remember the details of the competition, but we won a two-week stay at a space camp. It was everything you could've wanted in a summer camp experience. My call sign was Mufasa, because I was a Disney nut and my voice was already getting deep. They put us on the Blue Team and we beat the Red Team at EVERYTHING. And then I went ahead and got my first kiss from a girl nicknamed Noodlez (she spelled it with the Z). It still shines as probably the best summer of my childhood. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | This has to be my cousin. She's almost exactly a year older than me (give or take about two weeks), and our family has called us Jack & Jill since day one. To this day, we're still best friends, tell each other everything, live pretty similar lives. She's definitely "My Person." |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | It's all about authenticity for me. I've always felt like I read people well, so if I feel like you're trying to be something you're not, you're putting up a front, you're not saying what you really feel or doing what you believe, that's offensive to me. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I don't really have a funny story that I hold onto from the distant past. That just feels a little like "So, nothing funny has happened to you between then and now. You're still telling this story?" Funniest thing to happen to me this week was at my job as a swim instructor. There's a lifeguard that works the same shift as I do and we like to make fun of each other. I had just finished my lessons for the day and grabbed the nearest towel, stood next to him while I teased him for having to stay out in the sun for another two hours. He pushed me in the pool, but the joke was on him because I had his towel in my hand. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I've had this image in my head for a while now of spending a good amount of time living in all the biggest cities in America. I'd want to be in each one a couple months at least, to get to the point where I'm not just doing tourist things and I feel like I'm getting the rhythm of the city. I'd also want to be working instead of vacationing, that's just because I'm kind of a workaholic by nature and I know I wouldn't enjoy myself as much wandering around a new city without some clear goals. At the end of it, I want to feel like I know what it's like to work and play as a New Yorker, Angeleno, Chicagoan, etc. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would hope for intelligence- cognitive and emotional. I always got good grades in school and it seemed easy, so I started to think I was just smarter than the average bear. There was a period of time when I would try to outsmart people, hustle people, trick people. For a reference, my legitimate heroes in middle school were Lex Luthor, Loki, and the Joker. After a while though, something just clicked and I stopped trying to get over on the people around me and started trying to help them out, wanting the best for them. So, I'd say what I want for my kids is the brains to be the supervillain but the heart to not want to be. |
