Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

Am I hip now? Or is it too late?

Lauren, don't answer that. I finally broke down and read a David Sedaris book. What can I say? I loved it. Enough that I'm going to read all of his other books and possibly use one for my high school reading group.

I knew that I was going to really, really like Me Talk Pretty One Day when I found out that David Sedaris lisped as a child. While the descriptions of speech therapy brought back some bad memories for me, they were also hilarious:

I didn't see my sessions as the sort of thing that one would like to advertise, but as my teacher liked to say, "I guess it takes all kinds." Whereas my goal was to keep it a secret, hers was to inform the entire class. If I got up from my seat at 2:25, she'd say, "Sit back down, David. You've still got five minutes before your speech therapy session." If I remained seated until 2:27, she's say, "David, don't forget you have a speech therapy session at two-thirty." On the days I was absent, I imagined she addressed the room, saying, "David's not here today but if he were, he'd have a speech therapy session at two-thirty."

While all of the essays are worth reading, "You Can't Kill the Rooster", "City of Angels" and "Jesus Shaves" were my particular favorites. "Jesus Shaves" tells the story of the day that David's immersion French class talked about Easter. A Moroccan student asks, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?" The attempts that the other students make at explaining the holiday, in very, very basic french are hilarious. "City of Angels" is a story about David's friend Alisha, who comes to visit him in New York, and brings along a friend of hers (a friend that she's only known for a short while) from North Carolina:

The two women arrived in New York on a Friday afternoon, and upon greeting them, I noticed an uncommon expression on Alisha's face. It was the look of someone who's discovered too late that she's either set her house on fire or committed herself to traveling with the wrong person. "Run for your life," she whispered.

I don't even want to give you a taste of "You Can't Kill the Rooster". Just take my word for it and read this book if you haven't already. And if you have, maybe you should read it again.