- I had questionable hygiene as a child.
And when I say questionable hygiene,
I'm really talking about two things.
(laughter)
I never thought I'd say this on YouTube, Jesus.
Happy Mother's Day, folks!
Today's a very special day,
and it really holds a special place in my heart.
I unfortunately lost my mother to cancer
during my medical school training.
And when I started this channel,
I actually made a video dedicated to my mom on Mother's Day.
But now I decided to sit down
and tell you some more uplifting stories,
and share some of my most embarrassing moments
in childhood, that my mom was a part of.
It's gonna be a funny one,
it's gonna be an enjoyable one.
And for me, an embarrassing one.
Let's get started.
(bouncy music)
The first story I'm gonna share with you
involves a VCR player and carrots.
You may not even know what a VCR player is,
depending on when you were born.
(car honking)
(laughter)
Come on.
Anyway, I remember back when I was four years old,
my father was one of the first people in our community
to get a VCR, 'cause it was so expensive at the time.
It was right when the USSR had collapsed,
and the money got so devalued that any products
that were imported became extremely expensive.
A car would be double the cost of a VCR only.
That's how expensive this VCR was.
So my dad gets this VCR,
it's the pride and joy of the house,
for the first few days.
He teaches me how it works.
Shows me how when you put the tape in it appears on the TV.
My mind was blown.
And then, the next day my mom was cooking,
and she has all these carrots by her.
And I think to myself, well,
my dad put a tape in there and it pops up on the screen,
what if I take the carrots,
put them inside the little slot,
they'll appear on the screen, right?
I grab the carrots.
I stick them,
one by one inside the VCR hoping to see them
pop up on screen.
When they didn't, I was so confused.
I walked up to my mom,
and I'm like, mom,
I don't understand,
dad put the tape and it popped up on the screen,
why when I put the carrots in,
they don't pop up on the screen, too?
She got very worried,
not because of what I did,
but because of what my dad was about
to do to me if he was to find out.
So my mom, being the amazing human that she was,
right away gets down on her knees,
starts tryna fix the VCR,
rip out the carrots,
turns into a huge mess,
the VCR is basically like,
covered in carrot bits.
And right in that second,
like timing was from a movie.
My dad walks in, sees what we're doing,
flips out, starts yelling at me,
and my mom is there protecting me, hugging me,
saying "I didn't know, I didn't know!"
And finally, despite the fact that this VCR was broken,
and my dad spent all of his hard earned money that he
had saved that year on this VCR,
we all had a good laugh about it.
Because, after all,
I'm a four year old, I don't know what I'm doing,
but certainly it was very sad because now we
couldn't watch the VCR.
I think our whole community was actually really mad at me,
'cause they were all coming over to watch
the VCR in our house.
(bouncy music)
When we made it to the United States,
we were incredibly poor.
We were living dollar to dollar.
But my dad, because he was such a hardcore romantic,
he would constantly buy my mom gifts.
They weren't huge gifts,
they were more just sweet gestures.
For example,
if he saw a dress that he thought would look great
on my mom,
he would bring it home and tell her he got it for her.
She would legitimately yell at him.
She would tell him like,
are you crazy spending money we don't have?
He's like, but I thought it would... No!
She didn't want anything for herself,
she would yell.
She appreciated the gesture, you could tell she did,
but she was so focused on making sure that we survived,
we have enough money to live,
that I had everything I needed,
my sister had everything she needed.
So, it was one Valentine's Day, or her birthday,
I don't remember the special occasion that my father
bought her this huge makeup set.
And she loved doing her makeup,
she was always so beautiful,
and her hair was always well done.
Me being young, when I came home from first grade,
I thought this was a water color kit
that they bought for me,
and I had coloring books.
Like they loved buying me coloring books from like,
the 99 Cents store.
I took this kit,
and I legitimately put water in each one
of the little pallet holes,
and started with my paintbrush tryna paint my coloring book,
and it wasn't working too well.
So I brought it over to my sister,
who is nine years older than me,
and I showed it to her,
I was like, why isn't the water coloring kit working?
Did I do it wrong?
And her face was just so rich,
like this dismay, the fact that I just ruined mom's gift.
When she told me what it was,
I was like, oh my God,
if mom yells at dad so much about the
fact that he buys her stuff,
and now I just destroyed the thing he bought her,
I thought they were both gonna kill me.
So my sister told me I had to tell my mom,
I brought the kit over,
she was in shock, like why was there water all over it?
But when I explained it to her,
she didn't yell at me.
She hugged me, she said she loved me.
And like,
it's like she was never disappointed in anything that I did,
unless of course I brought home a bad grade from school,
then she like went off on me.
But any mistake I made, that was a genuine mistake,
she never got mad.
She was just so understanding and compassionate,
even when I destroyed her makeup kit.
(bouncy music)
I've only broken one bone in my body,
and that is my left wrist.
My mom and I went snowboarding in the Poconos.
I took a lesson, I was really bad.
I went on the bunny hill,
I was like, cool, I know how to do this.
I fell a bunch of times.
And I'm like, all right let me try it again.
Went on the lift, went down the bunny slope again,
boom! Took a horrible fall,
'cause I didn't know what I was doing, landed on my wrist.
Was too cool to wear wrist guards,
please wear wrist guards.
The ski patrol people escorted me to their care station,
put ice on it,
I was like shivering, nauseous,
which is a good sign that you probably broke a bone.
They didn't think I broke it,
they offered me to go to the ER, I didn't.
We looked at it and we said,
let's see what it looks like tomorrow.
Took some medicine, no big deal.
Wake up the next morning, my wrist is all swollen.
And what do I say?
I'm a good roller blader,
I won't snowboard, so let me try skiing.
So I started to ski,
and I wasn't falling, I was actually doing a great job,
so I stuck with that.
A day later, my mom and I come home to New York,
and my dad sees this.
He's a second year resident,
family medicine resident at the time,
he looks at my wrist and instantly goes,
are you guys crazy?
His bone is definitely broken!
And this is 11 p.m. at night,
he rushes me to the hospital where he's doing his residency,
right away they get an x-ray,
see that I have a wrist fracture,
cast it up, I had this cast on for four weeks.
And it sucked, I hated having a cast,
but you know, whatever.
I go to the orthopedist office,
and I was supposed to take my cast off a month in,
orthopedist says,
well, we could take it off today,
but I think we should take it off next week,
let's give you an extra week to heal.
And I was so bummed out that I went home
and I started doing some research,
the inner doctor of myself,
how to take off a cast.
There was special scissors or a saw that you can use,
and I said,
well I have surgical scissors that my dad
brought home from the hospital, I'll just use those.
And I saw that if you wet a cast,
it would be a little bit weaker and easier to cut.
I filled up my bathtub with a lot of water,
I went into it and I soaked the cast.
I started cutting the cast,
I was making good progress.
It took a while, a lot of strength.
The last little bit was really hard to cut,
I put a lot of pressure,
and boom!
I stab myself with the end of the scissors into the base
of my thumb, and I started gushing blood into the tub.
And if you've ever seen,
like if you're brushing your teeth,
or you have a nosebleed,
if there's water,
and even a little bit of blood gets into it,
it spreads very quickly.
Here I am,
screaming really loudly 'cause I just stabbed myself in the
thumb with scissors, the tub is filled with blood,
my mom rushes in thinking that something bad happened.
And she walks in to me sitting in a tub full of blood,
and she's panicking, doesn't know what to think,
starts crying right away.
Only after a few seconds it hits me what she sees.
And I have to explain to her that,
look mom, I got the cast off,
and I just cut myself a little bit, it wasn't even that bad,
it was just deep.
It was really embarrassing to have that happen
to my poor mom,
that she had to witness that all
because I wanted to get my cast off.
(bouncy music)
For the grand finale,
I'm gonna tell you something that's probably most
embarrassing about myself.
I had questionable hygiene as a child.
And when I say questionable hygiene,
I'm really talking about two things.
I refused to wipe my butt with toilet paper.
(laughter)
I never thought I'd say this on YouTube, Jesus.
And second, I refused to shower,
and I would only accept baths as a way to clean myself.
So my lovely mom was so understanding.
My dad was never around,
he was in medical school trying to bust his butt
so we could have something to eat in the coming years.
He never saw this really.
So it was basically my mom and my sister that
were involved in this process.
Every time I went number two to the bathroom,
afterwards, either my sister or my mom,
had to put me in the bath and wash my butt.
(laughter)
It's just so embarrassing and disgusting to talk about.
It was something about the toilet paper that like
irritated my skin and made me unhappy
that I had to say like,
no I refuse to use the toilet paper, I need my butt washed.
And somehow it became a thing,
that my poor mom, with a graduate degree, a PhD degree,
would be sitting, washing her kid's butt,
I think up until the age of seven or eight.
Just think about what an awesome human she is,
she has an eight year old son
and she's washing his butt every time he poops.
The next thing is, I refuse to take showers.
Go figure.
Showers are awesome, they're quick, it's easy.
I hated showers!
I didn't have a phobia, there was no real reason,
I just didn't wanna take showers.
I loved baths!
But how do you wash your hair in the bath?
My mom, again, loving human,
would take a bowl that I ate cereal in,
wash it,
just scoop up this nasty bathwater of my sweaty self
and spill it over my head, shampoo my head.
This too, went on until I was about eight, nine years old.
So I feel like,
my mom deserves so much more credit than she's gotten.
Protect me from my dad when I destroy his valuable VCR.
She takes it when I destroy her gifts that she wished
she's never gotten 'cause they were so expensive.
Cleans my butt with bath water until I'm eight,
nine years old.
Washes my hair and helps me take a bath despite the fact
that I should be taking a shower
and she doesn't need to help me with that 'cause she's
exhausted after a long day.
She truly was an amazing human.
And I think remembering her in this way is really
a great way to look back on it and keep her
alive in my memories, because that's all we can do.
We're all gonna, at some point in our lives,
lose a loved one, a friend, a family member.
And it's never an easy journey.
And grieving is an important part of that,
being sad is an important part of that.
We shouldn't move away from being sad,
it's part of the process.
If we move too quickly from it,
you won't heal.
And at some point you're gonna get sad,
and you're gonna make up for the time you skipped over
in your grieving process.
So I think I've done that,
and I think to keep my mom alive in my memories,
and celebrate Mother's Day,
to make a video like this where I can remember these silly
moments between us, celebrate what a great human she was,
I think that's really powerful.
So everyone at home, please love and cherish your moms.
It's Mother's Day,
tell them you love them today on Mother's Day!
Tell them tomorrow, tell them the next day.
'Cause again, as I said in my first video,
in this crazy life, you don't know what will happen.
And if you want to see the tribute that I made to my mom
two years ago, which is a really touching story, click here.
And as always, stay happy and healthy.
(bouncy music)