- 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)
