25 Things About ME (Matt)

1. I learned Russian Sign Language on my mission.
2. When I am at work, I organize all of my tasks into lists. At home, I hate lists. I have told Jen to never make me a list of things to do. I would prefer that she just tell me what I need to do and I will ask her if I forget as I go. She loves lists.
3. I choose my seat on public transportation based on proximity to emergency exits and how close I have to sit to other people.
4. I hate getting my haircut. This is why I have done it myself or simply had it buzzed for most of my life.
5. I keep my fingernails trimmed very short because it is the only way I can keep from biting them.
6. When I read books to Max I often use the characters and pictures in the book to make up a completely different story. For the past few nights Bambi has been a Power Ranger.
7. When I started at BYU I was a Broadcast Journalism major. I later declared Anthropology and eventually settled on Linguistics. I also considered Communications (concentrating in Communications Theory) and English.
8. I hate having change in my pockets when I am wearing a suit.
9.. When I first got contact lenses I could not get them in. I must have been trying for 45 minutes in the store when they finally sent me home to figure it out.
10. I am only doing this list because Jen has talked so much trash about it. I generally don’t like this kind of thing.
11. I hate driving at night when it is raining.
12. I was really surprised at how many differences between Jen and I that were on her list. I still can’t figure out how I convinced her to marry me.
13. I know everyone says that if money were no object they would do something noble like teach. I have given this a lot of thought and I am pretty sure that if I had that kind of money I would never work again and spend a lot of time just hanging out. My sister is a teacher. It is an extremely noble profession. But it sounds really hard. Besides, what makes people think that just because they were rich they would be any good at it?
14. I hate waking up but I love being awake early in the morning.
15. When I was 18 a doctor told me that I had the back of a 45 year old man.
16. I tweeze my eyebrows.
17. I don’t like being in warm temperatures. I prefer being cold.
18. A man pointed an assault rifle at me while I was on my mission. I was pretty sure he wasn’t really going to shoot me but I was still nervous.
19. I often wake myself up by snoring.
20. I can sleep at any time and in any place.
21. My brother and I both married women named Jennifer. It’s pretty hilarious when we cross paths and people get confused by the fact that there are two Jennifer Mangums. The funniest part is that everyone always assumes that they are sisters. Go figure.
22. I have one dish I repeatedly order at all of the restaurants where I usually eat. I have a hard time ordering something new and I also have a hard time trying new restaurants.
23. When I used to mow the lawn growing up I would sing the Primary song, “Pioneer children sang as they walked” in my head. But I would just do the part where the words say, “and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.” Then I would start over.
24. When we were little, my younger brother and I played a joke on my older brother once by removing a ladder while he was on the roof doing some chore. He was left without a ladder for all of 30 seconds. He got us back by inviting us up to admire his handiwork. He sent us up first and then removed the ladder. He went inside and promptly forgot we were even up there. After several minutes (I don’t know how long) 8 or 9 year old me and my 6 or 7 year old brother decided to try and move to another part of the roof where hopefully somebody would hear us screaming for help. I stepped on a bees nest and got stung, almost falling off the roof in the process. The screaming and scrambling brought my Dad out to see what was going on. He helped us down and my older brother got in really big trouble. I think he had originally been up there to get rid of the bee's nests.
25. Roughly a decade later I fell off the roof while painting the house with my younger brother.