DEAR TRENT,

In your last blog post, I had hoped you would try to be a little more personal in your writing and a little less, well, deep. (Some of us are not quite as cerebral as you.) You asked at the end if you had succeeded. Unfortunately, if I was your teacher, you would have failed this assignment. Every one of those quotes from your diary made my brain work way too hard. So, to answer your question, no, that was not personal enough.

Therefore, I have decided to hijack your blog post this month and have enlisted the help of your wife, Dani, to make things a little more interesting. (Don’t worry, the blog post you submitted will run next month. So you are actually a month ahead!)

Sincerely,
Tanya

DEAR DANI,

Thanks so much for agreeing to help uncover the more personal side of Trent. He wouldn’t do it on his own, so we’ll just have to do it for him! I’ve thought of a few things I’d love to know about him (and I’m sure his students wouldn’t mind knowing either!). So let’s get started…

trentDo you know any funny stories from when Trent was a child?
I think he must have enjoyed tormenting (he says entertaining) his younger cousins and siblings, scaring them with frightening characters in stories he would make up. Most of the childhood memories though, seem to involve shooting things like gophers, magpies, jackrabbits, salamanders, and his younger brother with a BB gun.

What was he like in high school? Rebellious and wild, popular athlete, stuck with his nose in a book…
Let’s just say that had I known him way back then, I wouldn’t have had much to do with him. I guess he was a bit of a headache to his teachers and principals as he protested this and challenged that. He was also very much into music—something he calls a “Band Jock.” I think that package might just have made me raise my seventeen-year-old eyebrow.

Biggest pet peeve…
People who cut in line at the border really make him mad; he’s written a post about that one on his personal blog. It bugs him that people say “less” when they should say “fewer,” and when they write “then” when they should write “than.” But Trent’s biggest pet peeve actually involves me and it revolves around the manner in which cheese is to be cut. Who knew? Apparently there is a “proper” way to cut cheese!

Most embarrassing moment…
Apparently, Trent was so adorable as an 8 month old that people said he was too cute to be a boy, so his mother dressed him up in the girl-next-door’s dress and took pictures of him, ribbons and all.

Does he snore?
Well, Rob Bakker and Keith Stewart would say, “No, it’s just gentle breathing,” but Tym Berger and I would beg to differ.

What makes him laugh the hardest?
Trent has kind of a “fractured funny bone.” He laughs the hardest at the snowmen that Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes makes, know-it-all Cliff Claiven, Archie Bunker, and any character that Patrick Warburton plays.

What makes him angry?
He doesn’t get angry.

If he wasn’t a teacher, what career would he have?
I know he is easily inspired by the ocean. Inspired to draw and paint. Art was one of his majors in university.

I’m sure some people are curious if there has been any . . . marital discord?
Oh yes. What marriage doesn’t have rough patches? At our house, Trent does all the cooking and I clean up after dinner. Early on, I learned that tidying WHILE he was cooking wasn’t a good idea!

Can you think of something that most of us at school wouldn’t know about Trent? You know, something he wouldn’t want you to share with us. 
Well, Trent and I like to travel and he is starting to fancy himself as quite the cosmopolitan sort. He still clings to his “roots” though, and delights in getting the best deal whenever he can. So, he still is a bit red faced recalling an anniversary dinner in Munich where he unknowingly ordered a glass of wine for $35. Not a tragic error until you know that he liked it so much, he ordered a second glass!

DEAR TRENT,

Was that personal enough for you? Tanya