Growing up in Kentucky, I used to hang out with four running buddies as a kid – 6, 10, and 11 years old. Two of them would later come out, and so 50 percent of my friends as a kid were gay.
I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while.
My dad was so much fun growing up.
I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.
I think it’s important for little girls growing up, and young women, to have one in every walk of life. So from that point of view, I’m proud to be a role model!
Although my parents both liked her, they just didn’t approve of a same-sex relationship. Nowadays, people say that you must let children be what they are, but when I was growing up, the parents defined the child – and my parents had a definite vision of how they wanted me to be.
I can only speak for myself, but when I was growing up in Memphis – and having the Martin Luther King holiday and the moment of pause on April 4th – he was just a statue to me. I wanted to make him a little bit more real to me as a human being.
We’re all just trying to fit in and find ourselves, particularly when we’re growing up.
Horses and dogs were part of my growing up years.
When I was a kid, I hated everything. I was really skinny, and I’d have a milkshake with an egg in it. Growing up, I ate, like, five different foods. I was not an adventurous eater. But as soon as I left home, that all changed and from that point on, I’ve been a pretty enthusiastic eater of new and strange food.
Growing up, I had a hair condition where my hair would fall out easily, and I had bad asthma.
I used to have acne when I was a kid growing up. You can imagine how serious that was in making you feel bad. And I had skinny bow legs. I mean, as a kid growing up, I was an insecure fella.
Everybody in my family cooks, so growing up and being around it… if I was going to spend time with everybody, it was helping them in the kitchen.
People always say, ‘Oh, I’d love to work with my sibling,’ or ‘My God, I could never work with my sibling.’ It was just a natural process for us. We started collaborating on our first films and it evolved. We have a passion for film that we shared as we were growing up.
I watched World’s Strongest Man growing up on TV and I just loved all of that, so I decided to enter a Strongman contest – just for fun. Really. For no other reason than that I just wanted to compete in something and push myself. I ended up loving it from the get-go and also found that I was very gifted.
Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.
Growing up, I saw the world as an inspiring place full of interesting people.
I used to to hustle growing up.
First love is such a big thing growing up.
Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else’s standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.
Growing up as an Asian American in this society, there were a lot of times where you feel isolated or out of place as an Asian. And growing up in White America, that’s absolutely my experience. And I think that’s why I got into acting because I wanted to be anybody else but Asian.
I realized I’d built up walls and carried grudges for years. I had a lot of animosity, dating back to when I was growing up, toward people who told me that what I was doing datingwise was wrong.
Growing up as a young black girl in Potomac, Maryland was easy. I had a Rainbow Coalition of friends of all ethnicities, and we would carelessly skip around our elementary school like the powerless version of Captain Planet’s Planeteers.
Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.
I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues – the blues background was my big inspiration.
Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it. I was going to be a lawyer, but I got saved.
I actually study boxing – my dad was a Golden Gloves champion so I learned how to fight at a very young age. Growing up in Brooklyn you always had to watch your back, so I pretty much learned to protect myself.
I have a lot of nicknames. In high school and growing up it was Beaver. In college it was Gotti.
I am still into the people I listened to growing up, so I completely remember what is like to be a fan, I haven’t changed.
My mom and dad got divorced when I was very young, and growing up in a family where the head of the household wasn’t a man made a big difference.
My family raised bird dogs when I was growing up in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and I’m a gun owner myself.
When I was growing up, my dad didn’t have weights, so he made himself a weight bench. Instead of a hand-me-down jacket, it was a hand-me-down weight bench.
Growing up in Mexico, I have many fond memories of not only celebrating posadas with my family, but also of the time spent together menu planning and prepping for decoration and entertaining activities. A lot of work goes into celebrating these traditions, but that doesn’t mean they have to cost a lot too.
Like most North Americans, I’d been raised on the notion that milk is the first food, and everybody must like it because it’s so good and so important for growing up and for being healthy.
Growing up Catholic has been a gift.
I fell in love with the night sky when I first looked through a telescope as a young girl growing up in Delhi.
I actually wasn’t really the class clown growing up. The class clown was always the mean guy who walked up and was like, ‘You’re fat. You’re gay. I’m outta here!’ I was always more kind of awkward and introspective.
You can imagine me as a kid growing up in redneck Texas with ballet shoes, tucking the violin under my arm. I had to fight my way up.
Yes, my fashion sense is outrageous, but I am a rebel. I am young and still growing up.
I knew what it was like growing up in a world where I never saw myself in anything.
I make mistakes growing up. I’m not perfect; I’m not a robot.
It was a very cool thing to be a smart girl, as opposed to some other, different kind. And I think that made a great deal of difference to me growing up and in my life afterward.
Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I’d go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we’d all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn’t jaded.
Growing up in Texas, I am a sunflower seeds and Dr. Pepper guy. If I have that, I’m pretty much good to go on any road trip, anywhere.
I was a Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan fan growing up.
Growing up, I loved films like ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘On the Waterfront’ and became a huge fan of Marlon Brando.
I love the whole Punjabi culture as I have seen it very closely in Delhi in my growing up years.
I knew that it was harder to unite two lives than I had imagined growing up. I knew that relationships could be fragile.
Bill Gates has always been a mentor and inspiration for me even before I knew him. Just growing up, I admired how Microsoft was mission-focused.
For kids growing up now, there’s no difference watching ‘Avatar’ on an iPad or watching YouTube on TV or watching ‘Game of Thrones’ on their computer. It’s all content. It’s just story.
I am occasionally enraptured by Western landscape. But I don’t identify that state of mind as having to do with my own origins, having grown up in the West, although I certainly crisscrossed Nevada countless times growing up, and then as a young adult, in cars and on motorcycles.
Even though my mother had told me growing up that, ‘If you win, nobody cares what color you are,’ that wasn’t necessarily true in the N.F.L.
I’ve always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn’t all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.
Growing up, my brother and I were begging for attention.
I finally did work out a very good relationship with my father, but it was rough growing up. We had a lot of conflict, and I think it surfaced in many of my works.
When I was growing up, I was an ’80s baby, so I remember the Sega Genesis and the first Nintendo. I grew up in a time when we first started playing video games on a computer screen. Now there are headsets and your body’s the controller.
Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.
