Matt Lorenz: Tales of an American Boyhood

Like contestant Michael Adams, sometimes we don't even have to lift a finger to paint. Others do it for us. From a delightful, and not at all slyly incriminating, article in the Mankato, Minnesota, Free Press:

When Matt Lorenz was in kindergarten he decided his teacher did a pretty lousy job of decorating the classroom Christmas tree, so he got his mom to donate a new one so he could decorate it to his satisfaction.

Yes, given the evidence, one could say Lorenz was always on the path to interior design, at least since the age of 5 growing up in Comfrey and Nicollet.

...

Lorenz, who lives in Chicago with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, hasn’t seen any of the footage yet. He’ll be watching the show for the first time Jan. 31 like everybody else, he said.

“I’ll probably be in the corner of my living room crying,” he said.

Lorenz was born in Madelia and moved to Comfrey with his mom, Marilyn Pederson of Mountain Lake, when he was 3 years old. Growing up in Nicollet, he used to decorate his farmhouse to the max around Christmas time with lights and elaborate decorations that attracted 2,000 people every year. The Free Press even did a spread on the display in 1988, he said.

“Not bad for the hicks in the sticks,” he said.