 I don't want to paint the wrong picture and make it seem like my childhood was worse than it was. The bullying was definitely something manageable and I think my defense mechanism was just humor, sarcasm, and self-deprecation to sort of diffuse any awkwardness or tension. I became a class clown and as long as I was able to make everyone else laugh, even if it was at my expense, with common stereotypes of, well, he eats Indian food so he smells like curry or something like that, then it was cool. Before 9-11, I would divide it as prior to 9-11, I think things were much more teasing and lightheartedness in a cultural way. It was never any mention of my religion and after 9-11, it was really no mention of my culture. It was completely religious. I remember 9-11 very well. If I can think of any other day in my entire life that I have a better recollection of. The first day after 9-11, I think it was the 14th or 15th of September, was when we were allowed to go back to school. One of my classmates, who prior to 9-11 had been one of my best friends, certainly suddenly was very antagonistic and had a lot of animosity towards me. I remember one of the first things he said to me was, go back to Osama and he threw a Snapple bottle at my head. I grew up playing basketball so I had very quick reflexes and I liked to think I still do. So I ducked the bottle, it didn't hit me and I'd never heard the word Osama before. So I thought Osama was like a gym teacher at school. So I went around asking people like, where is Osama? Like my friend is telling me about Osama, blah blah blah. I found out later that day that Osama bin Laden is like a terrorist and I also didn't know what a terrorist is. I didn't know any of the terminology. I didn't know what the Taliban was. I never heard of the terms like, I'll buy the blowback, war on terror, extremism, muhabism, none of that. So yeah, in order to make my classmates, my peers understand that I wasn't a threat or anything, I remember as soon as possible after 9-11, every Muslim and Arab and Desi household, the parents had the talk with their kids of like what to say, what not to say. And generally the 101 was to just assimilate as much as possible. My parents were no different in that regard. I remember being told if you greet your Muslim friends, you can just say hi instead of saying salam to them. If people are pressing you for your name or whatever, you can introduce yourself as Frank. I never did, but that was always an option.