Nick Offerman

So once the harvest would be done and last year's stems would be plowed under and the dirt would be turned over, often rocks, sometimes as big as your head, would be turned up

in the soil and so you would be sent out with a tractor and a little trailer to just cover the entire field and pick up all the rocks you see.

I read that when you were in the fourth grade studying vocabulary, when your teacher taught the class the word nonconformist, she defined it as a person who did the opposite of what everybody else was doing.

Upon hearing that, you raised your hand and told Mrs. Christensen you wanted to be a nonconformist.

Where did that sensibility come from?

Your question reminds me of at a young age, I want to say maybe first or second grade, I remember in art class, we had this project where we got a little piece of wood and a little paper cutout of a smiling clown head.

And then another little paper cut out that said, a smile is the nicest kind of welcome.

And the job was to stain the piece of wood and then glue the clown head and the text onto the thing and then varnish the whole shebang and take it home for mom and dad.

And I remember...

Looking at that sentiment, a smile is the nicest kind of welcome, and it made me feel kind of whimsical.

And so I tilted my clown head to what I considered a rakish, whimsical angle.

And my teacher gave me a C and said, look at this.

The head is crooked.

And I said, ma'am, that is a rakish angle.

That's

I will one day come to know that that's called panache.

And so I just always had this sensibility of like adding a little bit of a jaunty kick to whatever I did.

And so when I heard that that was called nonconformity, I said, yes, please count me in for one of those.

Nick, I know you're also an altar boy at church, and I've said that that helped you become very good at eye acting.

What is eye acting exactly?