A Quote by Jan Koum
I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.
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If I hadn't gone towards boxing, I might have been one of those kids getting into trouble. A lot of my friends did. They were clever kids at school, but they just went down the wrong path.
I was fortunately able to avoid getting into any trouble with police. There was - I remember I was 12, and I did something really (laughter) - a couple of friends, Cinco de Mayo - we were off school, and we saw some people looking like they were having a party. And we had a little bit too much time on our hands, and so we figured, as kids, a great idea would be to throw some things over the fence and hit all these people with stuff, like eggs and everything.
Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.
I grew up during the Communist time. When I was a student and I especially wanted to play rock, that was a problem for all rock musicians in the Soviet Union. My friends liked it, but all the Communist officials, bureaucrats, teachers, didn't like this. There was very powerful propaganda against capitalism and the Western ideology. Everything that was connected to the West - rock music, jeans, long hair, loud music - everything was not allowed. But luckily that's now in the past. I hope.
I was one of those kids who liked a lot of attention. I was always the kid in class who'd be telling jokes and getting in trouble. Theater was a natural way for me to channel that and also become a productive member of society.
There are people who look up to me, but the young Muslim kids, especially in Germany, they also need those closest to them to show them a good path, give them targets in their life. I grew up with a lot of these kids and they didn't have the support I had from my family or friends. Not just in terms of football, but everything else.
After my parents' divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn't super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that's true for most of my friends in L.A. I don't know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it's about being patient with your kids.
I never wanted to be a wild kid. I respected my parents and I had great friends. I was lucky. We did a lot of church activities. There were the bad kids in school who partied all the time, but none of my close friends did.
Up until I was 30 I really didn't date seriously outside of my race because I felt like society - not my parents, not my friends - society was telling me I had to pick a Black man.
I mean, I grew up in the Valley. All my friends were white Jewish kids. So the Latino kids thought I was this white girl.
I was never a 'bad' kid, but I did get into minor juvenile trouble. Look, I grew up in Brooklyn. This was the '60s, and the neighborhood was rapidly changing and not without its problems. All the kids of the neighborhood 'did their thing,' breaking windows and the like. I was no different.
I grew up on the tennis court with lots of other kids. There were like 40 kids all afternoon and I was one of the youngest ones, so I always had to chase everybody to keep up.
When I grew up in the Bronx, we always had everyone telling us, 'Watch out for the system, watch out for child welfare, watch out, they'll get you,' and I grew up with this feeling of, 'Society is over there and they're dangerous and not safe.'
Make your kids go out and play. Kids ought to grow up the way you and I grew up and we grew up fifty years apart or maybe more. But we did the same things. Now who's out playing in the afternoon? Nobody.
I definitely grew up differently to most of my friends, and that was a little bit of a struggle then. I wouldn't want to change anything about the way I grew up, even though it was a different situation. I still love the way I grew up, and I had an amazing childhood with a really supportive family.
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