Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids.
I used to ask my mom to try and shave my head on the sides to give me a receding hairline because Adam Ant had one.
My mom was a huge Adam and the Ants fan. My granddad listened to a lot of Motown and Elvis and Johnny Cash. So I was kind of well-rounded.
If I made a list of the people I admire, Mom would probably fill up half of it. She could do anything and everything.
When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, 'Don't get comfortable, because we may not be here long.'
I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.
My great uncle, my mom's uncle, had an appliance store in Philadelphia, and it was called Peter's TV. They sold stereos and televisions and washers, dryers, all kinds of stuff.
GE Appliances has agreed to give my mom a whole kitchen's worth of new appliances and a washer and dryer, and all I need to do is shout them out.
My mom actually had a band called Six Pack - even though there were seven of them - who went around Chicago performing popular songs. Her voice was like Gladys Knight mixed with Aretha Franklin.
My mom used to get arrested for being with my dad. She would get fined. She would spend weekends in jail.
America isn't Congress. America isn't Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.
I was born in Bangkok in 1968 and grew up in Southeast Asia with my Thai mom and my American father, who first came to the region to fight in Vietnam and stayed to work assisting refugees.
My mom always had me and my brother watching old Fred Astaire movies.
Dad was a world-famous astronomer; Mom was the artist who drew the iconic Pioneer plaque.
My mom studied biology and my dad studied chemistry and some physics and he is a physician, but he had a very strong interest in astronomy and astrophysics and exploration in general.
If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.
One day I went up to my mom and I said, 'Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher - a betatron - in the garage?' And my mom stared at me, and she said, 'Sure. Why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage.'
My first time coming over to North America was to New York around Christmastime when I was 7. My mom was a flight attendant, and she got put on to the Trans-Atlantic route over Christmastime, so she brought the whole family.
I believed that writing my story was my best shot to be able to pay my mom and my attorneys back and pull myself out of this massive crisis that I had put myself in.