An excerpt from The Memoir That Isn't About Me

One summer day, we went to Hollywood Video, where I discovered a movie called Jurassic Park.

Back at the apartment, I pushed the tape into the VHS player. I was wearing an Esmeralda costume from The Hunchback of Notre Dame that I had decided was standard daily attire. While the movie played, I stood in front of the TV doing fake ballet pliés—my mom couldn’t afford real dance classes, so I just copied whatever ballet routines I watched on PBS.

From the sweeping score to the sheer scope of possibilities, I was completely transfixed. When the T-Rex finally exploded out of the bushes, I froze, tightly clutching a bootleg Barbie with an oversized head and a mop of ratty blonde hair.

Woah... That’s what I wanna be when I grow up. I’m going to make movies.

I hit pause on the VHS  and ran straight to my mom.

At that exact moment, she was standing by the window, peering outside to monitor our clothesline because our laundry frequently got stolen if left unattended.

“Mommy, I know what I want to be when I grow up,” I blurted out. “I want to make movies.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied calmly, without even turning around.

I guess forcing my parents to watch my dramatic interpretations of Céline Dion songs—complete with door slams and one finger dramatically pressed against an imaginary earpiece—had already given it away.

Or maybe it was my magic shows, where I’d throw a sheet over my two parakeets’ cage, secretly release them into the closet behind me, then dramatically reveal an empty frame while you could still hear them flapping and chirping around inside.

My Filipino mother didn’t hit me with the classic Filipino ultimatum: No, you have to be a nurse. She was always of the mindset that your life belongs to you; whether you fail or succeed, that is your own reality to handle. Her attitude was simple: If that's what you want, it's up to you to go get it.

So, I begged my parents for a camera. Back then, a video camera was a luxury that took nine months of grueling overtime for a father like mine to save up for—and even then, he had to dip into our emergency savings to pull it off. But one day, he finally brought home a heavy, solid JVC camcorder. It smelled strongly of fresh electronics and plastic packaging—that distinct Radio Shack scent that happened to be my absolute favorite smell in the world.

My very first cinematic vision was a space epic with a grand budget of zero dollars. I asked my mom to take me to the public library to shoot on location. At this point, she didn't even scratch her head. She just accepted whatever chaotic project I was executing, because low-key, my weird ideas always made sense in the end.

My version of filmmaking was pure, unadulterated plagiarism: I would manually zoom the JVC lens into the glossy pages of astronomy books while providing my own dramatic, live-action voiceover.

Since I relied strictly on practical effects, I needed actors who scaled correctly to the size of library books, which naturally led me to my two female Polly Pockets. Both sported molded plastic hair and tiny rubber skirts, but I had to improvise the casting. The pristine, perfect Polly Pocket was cast as the heroine, while the slightly less cute one—the one the neighbor's dog had chewed up—was instantly demoted to playing the boyfriend.

Inspired by Sailor Moon, I’d place my heroine on a glossy photo of the moon and the chewed-up "guy" doll on Earth, directing a full-blown interstellar affair.

I’d pitch my voice up into a high, frantic tone for the heroine on the moon: "I can't come with you! Don't you know my people’s lives are at stake?!"

Then I’d drop my voice as low as a five-year-old girl could possibly go, forcing the fake boy doll to say from earth: "Please be careful!"

Back to the girl: "I'm tired of being told what to do!"

And finally, full of existential dread, he replies: "I know you know what to do! I'm saying be careful because I actually care about you!"

Steven Spielberg had absolutely nothing on me.