I think the bullying that young people have to go through now in schools is really rough. I really sympathize, 'cause I was bullied when I was a kid. When I was in grade school, I was bullied for being Asian-American. And the biggest problem with that is that I am not Asian-American. But when I was younger, and this is absolutely true, people thought that I might be Asian-American.
I have pretty thin eyes, I had very thin eyes when I was a little kid and I had straight black hair that I wore in a bowl cut. And from the ages of 3 to 8, people thought that I might be a young Chinese person.

On the first day that he met me, the guy that is now my best friend — he met me the first day of kindergarten — he went home that night and said, "Papa, today I met a boy with no eyes." And that was me. Kids would make fun of me in middle school. Kids would call me a "China man," which of the racial slurs has got to be the laziest. That is just pushing two words together. No work was done there. It was very confusing to me because I’m not Chinese, no one in my family is remotely Asian. I mean, we take our shoes off when we come inside, but that was more of a carpeting thing that anything else.

Here's how bad it got, though: I remember when I was in junior high, we had this music appreciation class that we never appreciated. And they took us to hear some classical music once at a symphony orchestra. So we go to a symphony orchestra.
In one of these classical pieces, there is a moment where they bang a gong, and every time they banged the gong, all the kids sitting in front of me would stand up, turn to me, and bow like that. Which is some racist-ass bullshit, but also incredibly well coordinated for a group of 13-year-olds.

13-year-olds are the meanest people in the world. They terrify me to this day. If I'm on the street on like a Friday at 3 PM and I see a group of 8th graders on one side of the street, I will cross to the other side of the street, because 8th graders will make fun of you, but in an accurate way. They will get to the thing that you don’t like about you.
They don't even need to look at you for long, they'll just be like, "Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Hey, look at that high-waisted man! He got feminine hips!"
And I'm like, "No! That's the thing I'm sensitive about!"

When I was a boy, I was also confused with a woman sometimes over the phone, because before I went through puberty, I had a voice like a little flute. I was once on the telephone with Blockbuster Video, which is a very old-fashioned sentence.
And — It is! I was on the telephone with Blockbuster Video. That's like when your gram would be like, "We'd all go play jacks down at the soda fountain!"
And you’re like, "No one knows what you’re talking about, you idiot!"
You know, how you talk to your grandma? So I was on the phone with Blockbuster, and I'd called them a couple of times in one day to ask about a movie, and I called for a third time.
I said, "Hey, yeah, I-I was just calling to see if you had Addams Family Values yet."
And the guy at Blockbuster went, "Hey lady! I’ll tell you when we get Addams Family Values!" But look, I wasn't offended as a boy being confused with a lady. I was offended as a lady who was getting pushed around by this chauvinist asshole that works at Blockbuster video, talking to me like I'm some floozy. I am a proud Asian-American woman and you will treat me with respect! I am a tiger mom!