Forty-six years after my parents' journey from India, here I am, the grandson of a spare auto parts salesman and a file clerk, tapped by the President of the United States to be the nation's chief communications regulator.
Even if I make a fortune in films, I want to have a diploma so I don't finish life as a little clerk.
The day in 2011 that I went to the office of the city clerk in lower Manhattan with my partner Dustin to register for our domestic partnership was coincidentally also the first day same-sex partners were allowed to register for marriage in the state of New York.
It was hard knowing that you walk into a store sometimes, and you're wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie and some baggy jeans, or your skin is a little darker, and the clerk is just staring at you a little bit harder. The cops treat you a little differently.
I was born in a poor family, a lower middle class family. My father was a clerk in the forest department. I was very bad at studies. I was not very good at sports, also.
Usually, when you are an ethnic person or a trans person, in your average, everyday, unsophisticated television show, you are there for that reason. And they clearly justify and overexplain why. You very rarely see a transgender actor playing the part of a grocery-store clerk without having to say, 'Oh, look at that trans person.'
The doctor who applied a stethoscope to my heart was not satisfied. I was told to get my papers with the clerk in the outer hall. I was medically rejected.
Let us suppose you become a craneman. Suppose you become a clerk in a lawyer's office. Give the best that is in you. Let nothing stand in the way of your going on.
There is no more moving a professional relationship than that between a law clerk and a Supreme Court justice. As a place to work, the court is unique in its intimacy and intensity.
Emotions are contagious. We've all known it experientially. You know after you have a really fun coffee with a friend, you feel good. When you have a rude clerk in a store, you walk away feeling bad.
