I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV by Maz Jobrani Page B

Twinkies, which made them bigger than me. It isn’t only the fries that get super sized—it’s also the immigrants. I would sit them down and do my best, giving them fatherly advice, but it never sunk in, mostly because the “when I was your age” speech isn’t as effective when you were their age only five years earlier. Real fathers told their sons about fighting in Vietnam or World War II. My war stories were much more passive.
    â€œYou should be grateful,” I’d holler at my indifferent brothers. “When I was your age we had the Falklands War. It lasted seventy-four days and I wasn’t even there. Then, of course, the invasion of Grenada. That lasted at least two weeks and I had to watch it on Nightline with Ted Koppel and his big hair. Every. Single. Night.”
    Screw the Ph.D.
    I wasn’t scaring anyone straight. Man of the house by night, Ph.D. student by day, I had delusions of grandeur. I had studied abroad in Italy my junior year as an undergrad and met a professor who inspired me toward academia. His name was Vincenzo Pace, buthe went by Enzo. He had a goatee and would wear professorial blazers with elbow patches to class. He also had a gold pocket watch that he would pull out every day and look at as the last few ticks counted down to the beginning of class. Then he would flip the watch closed, put it back in his pocket, and very dramatically hold his hands in the sky in a pensive way, calling out the subject of the day in Italian.
    â€œAllora . . . Maometto.” Which meant, “So . . . Mohammad.”
    This was a sociology of religion class. We would discuss the prophet Mohammad or Jesus or Moses and their philosophies. Something about the way he carried himself, how he spoke about these deep ideologies, made me believe that being a professor was exactly the vocation for which I’d been searching. On the one hand, it would make my mom happy because it would be an honorable profession that the community would look upon favorably. On the other hand, it would place me at a university where I could discuss ideas and debate with like-minded people, a modern-day prophet of sorts. Plus, I would be surrounded by young coeds the rest of my life. What prophet doesn’t want that? It was all coming together splendidly—until I started studying for the actual Ph.D.
    One thing you never hear about in the prophet business—it takes a shitload of studying to get a handle on all those complicated philosophies and theories. I remember getting into my Ph.D. classes at UCLA and discussing what our purpose was in the practical world as academics. The professor kept telling us that our goal in life would be to publish or perish. So basically we had to keep writing books on our theories and go around the world defending ourselves. If we were lucky enough to come up with a theory that a politician actually liked, then we might getto apply our ideas to the real world. In essence, we were living in a theoretical world, but every month when I got my tuition bill it didn’t feel theoretical at all. Eight thousand dollars a year so that I could live in a theoretical world? At least they gave us student identification cards which got us two-dollar discounts at the movie theaters in Westwood. I figured if I saw four thousand films I would break even. In theory I had come up with a solution that was brilliant. In reality, I was an idiot.
    I wasn’t happy, either as the man of the house or a prophet in training. Something was missing. Eventually I dropped out of UCLA and began working at an advertising agency. I had to do something in an office just to get my mother off my back. I figured if she saw me going to work in a tie every morning, she would think I was doing something useful.
    â€œYou are not a lawyer, but at least you look like von!”
    The first day on the job, the others in the agency told me to lose the tie. “We’re much more