When my parents immigrated to the States, my mom did not have a work visa. However, money was very tight, so she did various illegal jobs. She also didn't speak English yet, so the work was all manual labor. When I was 5 or 6 years old, she worked one job at a nighttime janitor. She also had a daytime job making sandwiches. I would come home alone from school each day, watch television, goof around, accidentally learn to program, until my mother came home to feed me dinner. After dinner, she would leave again for her night job, and I was supposed to go to sleep by myself. Being alone in the afternoons was no problem, but it turns out that being completely alone between 8pm to 1am every night when I was 5-6 years old was terrifying. We had no relatives in the country, so there was no one I could think about calling. I would be filled with terror as I was alone in the house trying to sleep. I think it has given me a lifelong avoidance of going to sleep. I often resist going to sleep, even as I'm exhausted and nodding off every few seconds. Or perhaps I am a night owl. It is hard to know which one it is. - Space Cowboy