My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I've had all four of his kids on the show.
Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.
I have an older sister named Haley and she wanted to be an actress. So I wanted to be an actress. It's really funny the way that some people don't give kids enough credit for like really being driven, and really wanting to do things so badly.
I stopped going to school in the middle of fourth grade. Everyone grows up with the peer pressure, and kids being mean to each other in school. I think that's such a horrible thing, but I never really dealt with it in a high school way.
When I'm on tour, I'm in a new city every single night, and the energy and the crowds and the kids and the screaming and them knowing every single word of my music and being onstage is such an energetic feeling with a big payoff.
For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.
On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.
It's much more acceptable for men to work and father kids. There's an inherent inequality, because we want to do it all, and I don't know how we can do this all.
People lived in the same apartments for years. You'd meet a group of kids in kindergarten, and you'd still be with them in high school. No one ever left the neighborhood.
The single most important thing we can do today to ensure a strong, successful future for Wisconsin is invest in our kids early - because what we do now will determine what kind of state Wisconsin will be 10, 20, even 50 years from now.
As I've often said, Wisconsin's greatest strength continues to be the dedicated, hardworking people of our state. They go to work everyday, pay their taxes, and raise their kids with good, Midwestern values.
