How a High-Five Sparked Forever

Howsitgoing everybody,

—it's Rex here, Brother, Son, Husband, Dad, tiki carver, home experiment king, and yeah, The Rexiest Man Alive. Just dropped the first episode of The Rexiest Family Around on RSS.com, and since this is basically my spot on iamtherexiest.com, I figured I'd share the heart of it right here: how it all started for me back in Tonga.

Picture the mid-90s. I'm this Mission President's kid, fresh in Tonga, and one day in 1994, I spot her—big smile that hits different. She's walking by, and I'm like, oh man, she's beautiful... and mean (in that playful way that kept me hooked). From then on, I couldn't focus in class. Instead of sitting around waiting for class to start, I'd stand outside just to catch her walking out of religion class next door. I'd throw a shaka, she'd smile back, and I'd be replaying it all day. The Rexiest guy in Liahona, trying to play it cool, but she was on my mind nonstop.

Fast forward a bit—we had these awkward, funny moments. Her sister was low-key trying to set us up, telling me "Hey Rex, she wants to see you at school right now." I'd show up, all hopeful, and she'd be like "Hey, what you doing here?" I'd just hang out, pretending I wasn't there because someone said she wanted to see me. Embarrassing, but hey, it worked eventually.

Then one night, I showed up at her house—smelling like Brut cologne (classic move, and yeah, I still rock that clean, romantic scent every day). She invited me in, we hung out, and things just clicked. Dates were simple and real: walking in my lava lava and black shirt, leaning against the handball wall at the football playground watching stars and the moon at the rugby bleachers—super romantic under that Tongan sky. Another one I'll never forget: heading to my small farm, picking huge tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, onions (man, those veggies were massive and delicious). We'd walk home loaded up, and neighbors would call out "Hey, can I have some for dinner?" So I'd hand it out left and right—we'd end up with just tomatoes by the time we got back. Good times, sharing what we had.

The big one? Deciding to get married. We were young, in love, best friends—thought, how do we make this last forever? Marriage just made sense. I told her I'd go home and talk to my parents; she did her part first—told her mom, who got super emotional and excited. Then we met up, and she's like "Did you ask yours?" Turns out I hadn't even said anything yet—I thought we were just talking about it. But she wasn't playing; we went straight to my house for dinner. Brothers all there, Mom at the table. She's giving me the look like "go on, say it." So I just blurted out, "Can I get married?" Mom was shocked—like, "What the heck?"—but we were all in. Still in school, finishing up diplomas, but we made it happen. Those were fun, wild times.

That's how this whole thing kicked off—the foundation for surviving Mesa summers, raising our crew of six, and turning chaos into something epic. Polynesian roots in the desert, keeping it real with no filters.