Me and Aaron Schock

Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL), 27, is the youngest member of Congress and represents the 18th District of Illinois.

At age 19 he was elected to the Peoria School Board. By age 23 he was unanimously selected to be Board President.

By the time he was in high school he was working a substantial number of hours per week at a gravel pit and invested nearly all of it. With these earnings he was able to purchase his first piece of real estate at age 18 and bought and sold investment properties.

He graduated from Bradley University in Peoria with a B.S. in Finance (a four year degree) in only two years.

Also he's referred to as "shockingly hot."

In 8th grade at Rolling Acres he was the Captain on the school's Mathcounts team. Mathcounts is basically an math competition for the best 7th and 8th graders. In the 1995-1996 competition, Aaron Schock lead the Rolling Acres Cougars into competition. However, he didn't register the best score for his team. That honor belonged to a plucky 7th grader: Dave Fymbo.

In 8th grade, I became the team Captain and received the individual honor of best score in the district. I won a scientific calculator. Of course, the rest of my teammates didn't pull their weight and our school didn't place in the top honors.

Speaking of that, in 6th grade I participated in a game show style competition called Scholar's Cup. It's only for 6th graders and I was the captain on our team. I received the individual honor of most questions answered correctly all season: best in the district. Again, our team finished in 4th place I believe despite my district leading performance.

Here's one question that is still stuck in my head.

What is the 2-letter postal abbreviation for Maryland?

The other team buzzed in first and I think they said MA.

That was incorrect and our team had 5 seconds to buzz in. I didn't know the answer so I waited for one of my teammates to buzz in. No one did. So instead of letting time run out, I buzzed in after 4 seconds and guessed MY. When they said the correct answer, I felt like I should have known it.

(Taking a sports analysis, you could argue that because my teammates were idiots they enabled me to rack up the stats. It's easy to imagine if you had a team of all-stars that it would be difficult for any individual to get a lot right. However, I was competing with another team to buzz in first. Plus, my teammates buzzed in a lot with wrong answers. For the record, in Mathcounts, the competition is in the form of individual tests, so your teammates can't affect your score.)

So I doubt Aaron Schock remembers that day 13 years ago when a 7th-grader beat his Mathcounts score, but maybe he does.