They also referred to him as “the foreigner.” We were never sure where he was from - just that he landed in a Wisconsin town as a foreign exchange student who struggled with English. On “That ’70s Show” (which debuted in 1998, over a decade after “Perfect Strangers”), Fez’s real name was considered unpronounceable by his friends, so they used the word for a hat worn by men in some Muslim countries.
It became inescapably clear that the few such TV characters of my childhood, particularly those who sounded foreign, served one purpose: the punchline.
But in recent years - with popular new series that feature immigrant characters with edge, charisma and wit - a whiff of resentment has started to invade my fuzzy feelings. I long looked back on these shows warmly, light- but big-hearted comedies that provided comfort anytime. And I glimpsed an adulthood where high-fives and squeals of delight replaced three kisses on cheeks. The grown-ups moved with a distinct ease and playfulness, without a trace of the formality I saw in my relatives. On sitcoms like these, the kids lollygagged around, propping skateboards by front doors before sitting down to dinner tables piled high with pizza boxes. In prime-time and in re-runs, I watched “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “A Different World,” “Martin,” “227,” “Family Matters” and “Living Single” as eagerly as I watched “Family Ties,” “Growing Pains,” “Full House” and “Roseanne.” My young mind didn’t differentiate between white and Black TV families. I tried emulating them all: ultracool like Denise Huxtable, ditsy like Kelly Bundy, sarcastic like Darlene Conner, polished like Whitley Gilbert, dreamy like Angela Chase, or with a stoner affectation and hair flip like any of the surfer dudes that peppered shows at the time. What they said was almost insignificant, though, compared with how they said it - the intonations and mannerisms that brought these words to life.
“You got it, dude.” “Did I do that?”īut I was most fixated on the slang kicked around by the teenagers, who embodied that all-American fantasy. lineup, replete with era-defining catchphrases minted by young children or nerds.
I worshiped at the altar of the late-1980s, early-90s T.G.I.F. I would have to pick another phrase and try again. And the words I had agonized over landed with a thud, drawing nothing more than a couple of perplexed glances and some snickers. It sounded, well, rehearsed, and nagged by an Arabic accent. Those in earshot would surely throw their arms over my shoulders, enamored, as they did on “The Cosby Show” or “Saved by the Bell.”īut as I hung there with blood pooling in my head, it never came out quite right. I planned to debut it at lunch - toss it out coolly, as if it had just dawned on me. I had convinced myself that delivering these words with the same lax-lipped American insouciance that the kids on my favorite family sitcoms had would transform me into a bubbly all-American girl who laughed down hallways with pals, instead of a Lebanese oddball whose classmates steered clear of. Recesses came and went, and my quest to perfect it continued. I tried comically extending the “whaaaat?” I tried curling the end slyly into a question or dropping it in a deadpan. I repeated the phrase, “Say what?” - an expression of shock I’d heard many times on TV - over and over to no one. Hanging upside down on the monkey bars of my elementary school playground in Missouri, I practiced a morsel of slang I found so intoxicatingly American, I had to have it for myself.
To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.