‘But Where Are You Originally From?’

I welcome your curiosity but there are limits

Aziz Ansari played Tom Haverford in Parks and Recreation. Photo: Getty Images

I would like to first begin with this little dialogue from the show Parks and Recreation, season two, episode two:

Leslie Knope: You’re not from here, right?

Tom Haverford: No, I’m from South Carolina.

Leslie Knope: But you moved to South Carolina from where?

Tom Haverford: My mother’s uterus.

Leslie Knope: But you were conceived in Libya, right?

Tom Haverford: Wow. No. I was conceived in America. My parents are Indian.

Leslie Knope: Where did the name Haverford come from?

Tom Haverford: My birth name is Darwish Zubair Ismail Gani. Then I changed it to Tom Haverford because you know, Brown guys with funny-sounding Muslim names don’t make it far into politics.

Leslie Knope: What about Barack Obama?

Tom Haverford: Okay, yeah, fine, Barack Obama. If I knew a guy named Barack Obama was gonna be elected president, yeah, maybe I wouldn’t have changed it.

I had a similar conversation recently when a guy asked me where I am from, and then he told me, “Oh, but you can’t possibly be from Calgary!”