When I was still at school, I'd help Dad at the concrete yard he had prior to the garden centre. I was doing things there, like driving the tractors and forklifts, that most kids my age couldn't.
I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.
Mothers will be fishing kids out of obscure cubby-holes for years!
Trans kids are living in the future in a way. When I was growing up, "transgender" wasn't even a word. It wasn't used. Just the naming of something that's invisible, or was thought of as shameful or different - giving it a name that's not a slur is powerful. It's still a little hard to imagine what it might look like growing older as a trans man, but I think that's going to change for the next generation. For trans kids growing up, that visual bridge towards their future selves is starting to develop in conjunction with this trans media wave we're in.
I think the idea that in a riddle there are two answers or two doors and that you have to pick the right one is almost sort of delightful to kids who are making so many choices every day and who often don't know for a while if they've made the right one. It's not as if you make a choice and then *ding* you have some sense of "oh, this is perfect and I'm happy" - it's never that simple.
In third grade, I was taking tap-dance lessons, and about six weeks before the recital I wanted to quit. My mom said, 'No, you're going to stay with it.' Well, I did it, and I was bad, too! But my parents never let their kids walk away from something because it was too hard.
I was in church a little bit as a very young kid, but, as they say in the South, 'it didnt take.' None of it took with me.
My Mom and Dad had six kids, and four of the six were going down the same road I was.
A coach yells at the kid he thinks can improve but the coach will not yell at the kid who he/she knows won't.
It might take a while but I think the rap game is the people that can do it. We're all role models more than athletes because athletes don't wear clothes like the kid in the hood and they don't walk and talk like the kids in the hood. We're closer to them than anybody because they can look at us and see them.
I really look at my life before kids and after kids and before I was more - not narcissistic - but I was definitely more selfish. I didn't have the same concerns as I do now. I've always been political, but you've gotta be engaged. You can't be apathetic anymore because what's at stake is bigger than yourself, it's your kids.
I have Type-1 diabetes, so Team 1 Diabetes is one thing I've been a part of for a while, empowering kids who have diabetes to know they can do anything they want to do. It's amazing, how much guilt and sadness comes with a kid when they find out they're diagnosed with diabetes.
I feel like I'm going backwards, actually, as I get older. I'm regressing. I feel more and more like a kid, which is kind of a fun feeling.
But there's a reason that we have different laws for juveniles than we do for adults. And it's because kids are not liable for the things they do in the way that adults are, because we think that kids are different.
I remember watching Gilda Radner when I was a kid and everyone thought she was so funny and no one ever said that she was a funny woman, she was just funny.
A big sister who cries over being human over you. A gravelly voiced kid who's friends left him over you. And a pink-haired girl who keeps your picture in her wallet.
Sometimes you do have to bank on yourself. You do have to believe in your ideas enough to really get out there and fight for it despite what people think of some young kids from the hood.
I always loved all kinds of music. I would watch musicals a lot as a kid, on TV, watch the Fred Astaire movies. I'd watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' I was a big Jerry Lewis fan, and they'd have these big bands and someone singing - some siren, or some guy singing some gorgeous song. I was always enamored of that style of music.
Miguel and Justin, the two biggest guys on the team, welcomed me right away and once the cool kids in school like you, it's easy to get along.
Fang took the entire family out for coffee and donuts the other night. The kids enjoyed it. It was the first time they'd ever given blood.
Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.
Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.
There is nothing wrong with your marriage if you're dealing with bills and kids and the broken garbage disposal and in-laws and work demands. That's a normal marriage.
When I was younger I saw a movie called 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Those two actors and that movie was my inspiration to want to be an actor.
It definitely gets challenging at times. I travel a lot more now, and its never easy having to leave the kids, even if its for a few days.
