#serious-thoughts One of the most distinctive memories I have is from kindergarten, when I was given an assignment to cut and glue papers together to match whatever kindergarteners were supposed to match—perhaps pictures of apples to numbers or something like that. There was one problem. My household didn’t have glue. In fact, we couldn’t even afford glue. My mom, who was the “breadwinner” of the family at the time (as a circuit assembly worker, for context), had the ingenuity to use grains of rice to stick two pieces of paper together. Because rice is sticky, obviously! And 5-year-old me had a MELTDOWN, because she was told that the assignment required glue and this had to be totally against the rules. I was going to FAIL.  *If I had to guess, this was probably $3 in 2003.* I remember going to school the next day and pulling out my assignment from my folder while feeling immense shame and guilt. But Ms. Dinh accepted the assignment perfectly fine, and when I came home that day and my mom got back from work, she brought home a brand-new bottle of Elmer’s glue, just in case any future assignments needed it. Inevitable for a kindergartener, really. But I think I broke my mom’s heart that week. Raising a first kid on a single-person income in a country you’ve only arrived in like 3 years previous was probably one of the most difficult things my mom had to deal with, especially with a partner who didn’t have a job and squandered the last house and all the savings on poker games. And neither of them ever had formal schooling in their home country of Vietnam, being raised to farm and forced to flee during the war. My parents tried their best though to isolate me from the reality of their situation. Despite being clothed with hand-me-downs from people they knew in the community and eating either McChickens (they were $1 back in the day!) or plain rice with soy sauce or fish sauce for dinner, my dad always snuck away some money to buy games for me and Pokémon Emerald is already enough escapism for a kid at that age. Thanks to them, I didn’t really worry too much until I got older.  *Initial US release: May 1, 2005. Bella’s hours clocked: 953, apparently.* Progressively, too, they were able to improve their situation to the point where my parents are now able to live in a house four times as large as the mobile home I grew up in, and take regular vacations to Vietnam and Hawai’i. My dad’s American dream? Fulfilled. Good for him. My mom had me when she was 28 years old, and I’m writing this now at 26, fortunately being in a much better financial position than she was ever in. But I think the more important part about raising a kid is what kind of person they’ll be. - Will they be more self-sufficient than I was? - Will their heart be broken as much as mine was? Or tenfolds more? - Will they cry if I didn’t have the time to go to the store to get glue and had to use grains of rice instead?