10 Somewhat Interesting Things You Might Not Know About Me

To anyone who wants to get to know me better

I was tagged by The Sober Vegan Yogi to share ten odd things about myself. My brother Michael L Butler has already shared tidbits about me in his stories.

So I’ll go the lazy route here and start with what he’s already revealed:

Tidbit #1: My dad once got furious at my brother on a Hawaiin vacation when I wasn’t in the hotel bedroom at 3 a.m.?

What can I say? I met a cute girl and I was 15. We kissed on the beach.

It was the highlight of our vacation to Hawaii.

Tidbit #2: My dad quizzed my brother on why one of my friends wrote about this special talent of mine in my 1985 high school yearbook:

“To the King of Farts, the Fart Master, the Farting Machine. Nobody can rip booming, sonic fart on cue like you, the Fartman! Aka Scott Fartwell. Always producing “fart attacks.” May you one day find your Queen of Farts. Ha, ha.” — Michael Butler, “My Brothers Fart Got Me in Trouble”

Can’t a little brother have a little privacy?

I’ll take over the narrative

Tidbit #3: I’m not so little at six-foot-three and, yes, this came in handy as a basketball player in high school.

Tidbit#4: One of my biggest regrets as a basketball player was in college. I led my intramural team Just a Bunch of Guys to the championship game and then I wasn’t allowed to play because … damn … I forgot my college ID.

Tidbit #5: Being careless is a bad habit. I occasionally leave the front door unlocked, and my wife will dispute this, but this led her to have a 5-mile radius for my father-son adventures with my son when he was younger.

Until he was nine and she let us go 53 miles to the Malibu Wine Safari (Tidbit #6). She was invited, of course, but decided not to go at the last minute.

I was bummed my son, now 14, didn’t want to feed Stanley the Giraffe, and our conversation went something like this while he towered over us.

“I don’t want to feed Stanley,” he said.

“How about we take a picture with Stanley?”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t want a picture with him.”

So we didn’t get a selfie with Stanley, but the next day my son and I had our longest back-and-forth conversation (21 or so exchanges) as he told me about every detail about the animals and details the tour guide had shared with us.

I love to read (tidbit #7)

My favorite genre is autism memoirs because I am writing one about my adventures with my son, and I love to read travel stories about people who aren’t afraid to leave their own home nest and pursue their wanderlust.

That will probably be the end of my memoir. My son and I taking a long adventure, probably by train, far exceeding our old five-mile boundary.

My Medium journey (tidbit #8) began while researching YouTubers with writing channels. I saw it was published on Medium.com, and I researched what Medium was all about and found you could write and get paid for it.

I’ve written almost every day since I joined Medium in October 2021. I have extra time due to a work leave this year because of an auto-immune condition (tidbit #9) that puts me at a higher risk of Covid exposure in a classroom.

I ran a crisis hotline

Tidbit #10: My heart once leaped to be the director of a crisis hotline. I was sitting in a pew at church with my wife and the pastor said how they were going to start a hotline with the local police and mental health agencies.

And my heart leapt. Grammarly wants to say it leaped. But it leapt.

I asked the pastor about the hotline, and he wanted to set up a meeting with me because he thought I might be the one to set it up and be paid to run it.

We met, and I volunteered at a Suicide hotline to get ideas on how to run it, and then I created a training manual and recruited over 100 volunteers.

It lasted for three years before the pastor didn’t want to help people in crisis.

But the thing I learned from the experience is everyone serving on the hotline had things they were going through, and it taught me to come alongside other people and to listen to people like I trained volunteers on the hotline to do.

Hope you enjoyed learning about me. Now it’s your turn.

Shout out to Klara Jane Holloway and her story, “I Made 19 Cents on Medium Last Month. What Do You Have to Brag About?” I love her vulnerable story.

Tagging those taking The Salt Path Journey: Evon, Janice Macdonald, Klara Jane Holloway, C.A. Jaymes, Angie Mangino, Michael L Butler, The Sober Vegan Yogi, Belcairn, Mary DeVries, and Jane Kelley

How about we each write a “10 Somewhat Interesting Things You Might Not Know About Me” story and tag each other to get to know one another better? Tag me @butwellscot… I don’t know why but I put my last name first.

The Sober Vegan Yogi has written her story. Klara Jane Holloway her story. And my brother has too. So Salt Path writers be sure to read their stories.

If you’re reading this and want to take a journey with eight other writers reading, writing, and interacting over an interesting book, then read the story below and leave a comment if you’re interested in taking a journey with us.

Check out my latest YouTube video on how to build an audience on Medium.