In this content, the speaker is using present tense to talk about something happened in the past. If I use past tense here, would it sound weird to native speakers?

Rebecca

Good question! No, it would not sound weird to use past tense to describe this event which occurred in the past here. The reason the narrator chose to use present tense to describe the past event is so that the listener feels like they are closer to the event or a part of the story. This is a method often used in storytelling in English, and is not common to use outside of telling a story.