Since I'm now 31, I'll do a thread where I thrill you with 31 fun facts and anecdotes about my life thus far.

1. When I was born, there was a horrible thunderstorm. One of my first acts upon exiting the womb was to raise my pudgy hand and to silence the weather. The nurses were shocked into silence. My mother, being English, was oblivious to weather-related events

and broke the mood by loudly and rudely demanding beans on toast.

In 4th grade in the year 2000 I briefly saw George W. Bush from a distance as the Provo Utah airport. My overly-excited self loudly yelled "MR. BUSH YOU SHOULD INVENT PRETEXT TO INVADE IRAQ IF YOU WIN THE ELECTION!" and his face lit up.

I'm really sorry.

That was number 2 BTW.

3. In late 2012, I randomly ran into a nice young Korean man named Kim Nam-joon, who was at a crossroads in life and felt lost. He asked me what he should do. I told him "I don't know man join a Kpop group or something those seem popular."

He said he didn't know if he has the skills so I told him to try rapping as that seemed easy.

4. On a trip back east to visit historical sites with my grandparents, I visited the McDonald's where Washington and his generals ate during the Valley Forge winter. His name is still on the bench.

Washington insisted on only eating $1 McChickens, reasoning that if his troops were suffering, he should too.

5. My daughters are so cute and personable I regularly have strangers in grocery stores interact with them and tell me how cute they are.

6. I was denied entry to MENSA because they only wanted amateur smart people, not professionals.

7. I had to have my CPAP customized to be strong enough to move my titanium lung replacements. It blows air with the strength of 3 Boeing 747 engines. It could kill ten men.

8. Jihyo stans me.

9. My parents once got mad at me for not folding my laundry before I put it away, but I pulled it out and showed them zero wrinkles. None. Not a single one. An unexplained phenomenon, to this day.

10. Once at a funeral I approached the casket and commanded the deceased to rise up.

Needless to say this was very rude and socially gauche. I was escorted from the funeral and the deceased's family refuses to speak to me to this day.

I don't understand why, I at least tried to do something about it while everyone else sat around sobbing.

11. I am a Youtube celebrity. If you search "How to make bacon" in French on youtube, a video I made for my French class for extra credit is one of the top 5 results.

12. I love true-crime documentaries and youtube videos, so I can find out what Yasuo mains are like in real life when they're not on the Rift.

I once recited the Gettysburg Address from a mock-presidential-podium to a full room to thunderous applause. This was the beginning, peak, and end of my political career. I was around 10.

13 btw.

14. One time on a tour of the White House I got lost and stumbled into Donald Rumsfeld's office and discovered a state secret: his infamous "standing desk" wasn't really a standing desk. He was actually really short. The desk was normal.

They told me that this horrible truth couldn't get out because it could tarnish America's image abroad during wartime, and I was sworn to secrecy until my 31st birthday.

YOU THOUGHT I FORGOT DIDN'T YA DONNY.

15. I used to be able to speak Spanish, but after an incident in high school where I offended the family of a friend who happened to be a girl, my life was in danger and I had to pretend I couldn't speak Spanish to throw them off my scent.

Eventually I lost it.

16. Once around 2009 I confided in a young man at a park in California that I had had a nightmare about a short anthropomorphic furry creature murdering me with a poisonous blowpipe while giggling.

That young man's name?

Marc Merrill.

17. It was I who coined the well-known phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword, but the spear trumps all." #teamspear

18. Once I ran into a nice but short man who happened to also share my birthday, and we had an impromptu early December 17th birthday celebration and we got to talking about Lord of the Rings. A bit loopy on fry oil, I asked him, "How whacky would it be if, when Gandalf returned,

he was pissed off and grumpy at Middle Earth and didn't want to help save it?"

His eyes lit up and he thanked me for the inspiration.

Anyway @rianjohnson would have at least appreciated my name in the credits.

19. During the previously mentioned White House tour--at the time the Bush administration was big on pushing "Waterboarding isn't torture," and to show their point you had to get waterboarded to tour the White House.

But it was kid-glove treatment, you could pick what flavor of water they'd board you with. I picked Grape. My mom was pissed when she found out as it ruined my white shirt.

I was a dumb kid, I thought I could still wear the shirt as a conversation starter--"Oh don't mind that stain, that's just from the time I got water boarded at the White House."

20. A man in Neuchatel Switzerland told me that I looked exactly like Barack Obama.

Exactly.

Like.

Barack.

Obama.

EXACTLY.

21. I met a small handful of CERN scientists when I was in the Geneva area, and my impression was that they were exactly how you'd think they'd be.

22. The first time I started resistance training was because a pretty popular girl had loudly exclaimed in horror that my wrists were tiny.

Thanks, Shawnee, you oblivious rude jerk, for setting me on the path that resulted in benching over 3 plates 15ish years later. I guess?

23. One time I went to school 100% convinced I was going to get into a fight with a guy bigger, stronger, faster than me, who was always giving me crap. I knew I'd lose.

My steely determination to plow through the day and take a losing fight when it came with cold discipline gave me a "born to kill" look that deterred the troublemaker from saying or doing a single averse thing to me that day.

Life is funny sometimes.

BTW I know it did this because I had someone ask me why I looked like I was going to kill someone.

This was before "Socially awkward white guy goes to school looking pissed off" meant evacuation.

24. In college I was still socially awkward. One time I met a new gal in the singles ward and my first interaction with her involved calling her "Eurotrash" because she liked soccer.

We now have two children.

25. I am a descendant of Alfred the Great.

This isn't really much to brag about. It's similar to an Asian man saying "I am a descendant of Genghis Khan." Almost every English person probably has Alfred somewhere up there in the attic.

But I will brag anyway.

26. I may have mentioned this before but it's good for a re-tell.

When I filed my papers to serve a mission whenever anyone asked where I wanted to go I said "Anywhere but post-Christian western Europe."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Rookie mistake.

(For those of you not in the know, I was called to serve in the Switzerland Geneva mission.)

27. My first major in college was History. I literally quit it, not because I didn't love the material, but because I didn't want to spend 3 more years with the kinds of people that become history majors. Absolutely insufferable people.

They had their fingers up their own butts 24/7, only pulling them out to sniff 'em because they liked their own scent.

28. One time on my mission I had a huge falling out with a companion. Not gonna go into details--there was fault on both sides.

He and I both absolutely hated mayonnaise. With a passion.

He went on to serve somewhere else and I stayed where I was, but we were at the same meeting once where lunch was served. The lunch was small sandwiches with Mayo. I got a plastic knife to scrape mine off.

The MP's wife said "Oh yeah Elder [Redacted] hates mayo too!" and without a second thought I was like oh yeah right I should take him a knife to scrape it off, since they weren't handing them out.

Never occurred to me not to help a man with whom there was mutual dislike scrape mayo off his sandwich. Mayo is THAT BAD.

I took him the knife and he looked at me kind of coldly until I explained it was for the mayo. His face lit up and I could practically see his heart soften.

He was much more pleasant in our few later interactions after that.

I told this tale because I learned a lot about people from it, and because mayo is a powerful social tool, whether you like or hate it.

29. One of my greatest fears is losing my family, and I cope with that by researching morbid stuff and true crime. It's 100% cope, it will help with nothing in a bad situation.

30. There was a moment of time for a few minutes where I was worried that I had been unable to prevent a legal bureaucratic avalanche from falling down on the head of me and my colleagues.

All because some wise guy had cracked a joke about a time machine to exploit a bureaucrat's bad English.

Luckily God intervened and nobody got slapped by the government that day.

However, I still give this guy crap for his time machine antics whenever I get a moment.

31. I actually have a really good build for squatting, and the fact that I suck at it is due to a series of unfortunate sequential events.