Cristela Alonso

And I think the closest thing that I could understand is my mom used to make me translate the news to her as a little kid.

So when I was a little kid, I'm translating all of these big things, these big ideas to my mom.

So I think that when I watched Murphy Brown, I recognized some of the names from the news and it made me feel smart.

It's like this kind of comedy, the words, the vocabulary.

I was a big word nerd.

I did all the spelling bees.

You know, I did the Scripps spelling bee, like the regional when I was in fifth grade.

I love vocabulary.

And I just like learning.

I was a big public library person.

I would go to the library.

That's how I spent my summer vacations when I was a kid.

I would go to the public library and read because it was free.

When I was home, I was the person, oddly enough, that I used to put all the furniture together.

Like I would do do-it-yourself projects.

When I was in high school, I wallpapered our house.

while other people were going to prom, going to school dances, all the paperwork.

You know, my mom, there were four kids, and my sister eloped.

When she was 18, I was about eight.

Right when we left the diner, she eloped, and she was the one that did all the paperwork.