Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  On my way home, riding my bike down Buena Vista, I saw two raccoons on the sidewalk. I’ve never in my life seen one. I stopped my bike to get a closer look and watched as they climbed up a tree. You could have knocked me over with a feather, seeing raccoons like that.

  September 16, 1986

  Chicago

  A bumper sticker I saw:

  Bumper to bumper

  butt to butt.

  Get off my ass

  you silly nut.

  September 19, 1986

  Chicago

  Last week a girl in our fiction workshop told the teacher, Jim, that she didn’t know what she wanted to write exactly. She said she was interested in death, so today she turned in a poem about Vietnam called “The Walking Wounded.” “I see silhouettes. / Green silhouettes,” it began.

  Every line had a period at the end. Jim called her poem a list, and she announced that she would not be coming back. She wore leather straps around her wrists.

  After class I came home and spent an hour and a half taking my typewriter apart. Something was jammed inside. There are countless tiny screws in there, and it’s amazing to me that I fixed it. I feel so proud of myself.

  September 25, 1986

  Chicago

  Yesterday Amy took a cab home from her improv class. She sat in the back wearing sunglasses, and the driver tried to flirt with her, saying, “You’ve got beautiful eyes.”

  Later she went to the Laundromat, where she saw a man carefully folding his wet clothes and putting them in the dryer.

  September 28, 1986

  Chicago

  Paul was here until this afternoon. During his visit we went around town on bikes and buses and the L. We took a few cabs, but mainly we walked. Last night he had a meatball sub and today he had a hot roast beef sandwich. He ate a lot of gravy on this trip. Before leaving he told me this joke:

  Q. How did they know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?

  A. They found her Head & Shoulders on the beach.

  October 2, 1986

  Chicago

  Dad called at six a.m. It was still dark outside, so I assumed someone had died. Why else would he call me?

  It seemed he was on his way from British Columbia to Raleigh and was at O’Hare, laid over between flights. In Canada he’d fished for steelhead trout. He caught five big ones in ten days, but his main haul was stones, which are his new thing. In his suitcase were two twenty-five-pounders, one that he says resembles a human head and another that looks like a fish.

  While there he saw an eagle swoop down and snatch a beaver off the banks of a pond. I loved the wonder in his voice when he related this story. My father has a terrific voice.

  October 3, 1986

  Chicago

  A woman on All Things Considered did a seven-minute story on the idea of home that involved a number of different people. Mr. Rogers talked about the house he grew up in. He said that the bedrooms were upstairs and described the furniture and the hallways. It was layout information. Then came an old woman who talked about her father. She said that he was a kind man and that he had been beaten to death while working as a scab at a bakery. The woman received the news and remembered thinking, If anyone has to die, why not my mother?

  In those days, she said, dead bodies were put on ice and displayed in the family’s home. Her father’s casket had a leak. “I remember the ice melting and dripping and forming a puddle on the floor, and I will remember it until I die,” she said. “I’ll remember seeing it and thinking, Here is my father. He is on ice in the living room.”

  I found some Xeroxed papers from Adult Children of Alcoholics that included the following Checklist for Hidden Anger:

  Procrastination in the completion of imposed tasks

  Perpetual or habitual lateness

  A liking for sadistic or ironic humor

  Sarcasm, cynicism, or flippancy in conversation

  Frequent sighing

  Overpoliteness, constant cheerfulness, an attitude of “Grin and bear it”

  Smiling while hurting

  Frequent disturbing dreams

  Overcontrolled monotone speaking

  Difficulty in getting to sleep or sleeping through the night

  Boredom, apathy

  Slowing down of movements

  Excessive irritability over trifles

  Getting drowsy at inappropriate times

  Sleeping more than usual, twelve to fourteen hours a day

  Waking up tired rather than refreshed

  Clenched jaws while sleeping

  Facial tics

  Grinding of teeth

  Chronic depression

  Chronically stiff neck or shoulder muscles

  Stomach ulcers

  These people have got you coming and going. You can’t be happy and you can’t be miserable. You can’t yawn, laugh, or sigh. I am sarcastic, sometimes have a hard time sleeping, get tired at school and work, and have facial tics. Four out of twenty-two isn’t bad.

  Here is the list of telltale attitudes:

  We judge ourselves harshly.

  We take ourselves seriously and have difficulty having fun.

  We are approval seekers and fear personal criticism.

  We feel isolated, different from other people.

  We focus on others rather than looking honestly at ourselves.

  We are attracted to people who are rarely there emotionally for us.

  We guess at what normal is.

  We live from the viewpoint of victims.

  Is seven out of eight bad?

  October 5, 1986

  Chicago

  Lately Neil has stopped sitting down. She hovers, but her ass never touches the floor. I lifted her tail yesterday and discovered an awful mess. She’s balding back there, and it’s all very raw-looking, so this afternoon I took her to the Uptown Animal Hospital. At first we were alone in the waiting room. Then a woman came in with two Persian cats in a carrying case. One was named Wiener and the other was Schnitzel. A few minutes later a man arrived with a dachshund that was wrapped in a blanket and was named Schnapps. As I was leaving after seeing the vet, a well-dressed woman walked in with a white poodle and announced that it was time for Gucci’s distemper shot.

  October 9, 1986

  Chicago

  A list of things that I could paint on a cat:

  a log

  a telephone receiver

  tonic

  a list

  a trophy

  a tongue

  October 13, 1986

  Chicago

  In sculpture class we looked at Arte Povera slides. One was of a pile of potatoes with bronze ears lying on top of it. We saw Richard Serra and Eva Hesse pieces. Everything looked dirty and depressing to me. There is an odd chatterbox in our class who speaks as if she’s known the person she’s talking to for years, and like it’s just the two of them in the room.

  The teacher was discussing discipline, and the chatterbox interrupted, saying, “I know what you’re talking about because I used to be a dancer. I studied dance…well…let me go back. See, I always did art, but at the start the pieces were made of wood. I feel like I put them on the back burner, with dance, you know, on the front one. Even so, I feel like they were related to movement. So anyway, I studied dance for three years and then I moved to New York, which, let me say, wasn’t all that great. But I went anyway and nothing happened. I mean that nothing in the dance world was happening for me, and it was very discouraging until I said to myself, Hey, what about the sculpture? And I knew then that art was really my first love. It was at the core of everything, so I said to myself, Better go back to school. So I moved back here and…yeah, the discipline thing is really important. Now I’m working in metal.”

  She delivered at least ten monologues this morning, all while smoking and rubbing at the blue circles under her eyes. I sort of love to hear her talk. She’s just burning up with her own thoughts. Tomorrow, she said, she’s driving to a place to buy aluminum.

>   October 15, 1986

  Chicago

  I’m thinking Neil must have a cold. She sneezes all the time now and sleeps on the stereo in the living room. It’s cold and drafty there, so I don’t get it at all. Early this morning, at around six, I woke up from a bad dream. Then I had a cigarette and took Neil off the stereo. I thought she should sleep with me for a change, but she didn’t want to. Now she’s sniffling and sneezing, and so am I. We’re in the same boat, only I sleep in bed and she sleeps on the stereo.

  October 17, 1986

  Chicago

  I ate lunch at McDonald’s and saw a fat wallet fall out of a man’s jacket pocket and onto the floor. Broke as I am, I did not think of waiting until he walked away and then taking it. Instead I said, “Hey, you dropped your wallet.”

  He said, “Oh,” and looked at me as if I were the one who’d taken it from his pocket.

  Tonight at the coffee shop a telephone number fell out of my library book and a man pointed it out to me. It was not an important number, but still I pretended that this guy had saved my life. He did not seem to care.

  October 19, 1986

  Chicago

  A man approached me on the street, saying, “Sir?”

  I told him I’d already given away all my change, and he said, “No, I don’t want money. I want a job. I need one.”

  I told him there was a labor pickup on Broadway and Wilson and that he might try there early in the morning. The fellow was black and had nice clothes on. He was a few years older than me and said, “I have experience in accounting.” This last word was whispered, which was strange.

  I told him that I didn’t know anything about accounting.

  “Well, can you give me some money, then?” he asked. “I’m hungry. Can you buy me something to eat?”

  I said no, and he continued, “What if I come to your place and you fix me something?”

  October 22, 1986

  Chicago

  Today we had a critique in painting class. One guy who spoke a lot has bangs down to his chin. He wears medallions and paints his fingernails black. I’d written him off as being too affected, but he was one of the few people to comment on his classmates’ work. Now I feel bad for having judged him.

  Another person I noticed was Don, who is also in my writing class. He’s a little older than me, and I’m sort of fascinated by him. Ask Don where he’s from, and he’ll say he’s been all over the world. Don introduced himself on the first day as a poet, a filmmaker, a painter, and a photographer.

  I might say, “I paint. I take pictures, I try to write, et cetera,” but would never in a thousand years use those titles for myself the way he does.

  Don is interesting to me because he treats everyone like a child. He scolds and gives pats on the head. His poetry is about “sittin’” in a hotel room with “nothin’” but his memories and an “ol’ trombone.” His paintings are equally clichéd—night scenes, mainly. Norman Rockwell with a five o’clock shadow. Don is complex in an odd way. “I guess you could say that I’ve always been a loner,” he says, and, “Really, my concerns are very intellectual.” He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you’re truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own.

  October 23, 1986

  Chicago

  I followed a couple down Wilson Avenue last week, walked behind them for two blocks, and the woman said fuck eleven times. She was angry at a friend who was supposedly spreading lies about her. “I’m going to fucking talk to that bitch Donna and say, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, spreading these fucking lies? It’s none of your business who I fucking fuck, you fucking asshole. I’ll knock your fucking teeth down your fucking throat if I ever…’ ”

  I would have followed them longer, but I was carrying heavy groceries.

  October 27, 1986

  Chicago

  At the Kentland Western Pancake House in Kentland, Indiana, we sat beside a table of high school athletes. They’d just come from a football game and were eating fries and talking about the coach. One thing about him, they all agreed, was that he wears loose shorts and always wants to sit on the desk. When the coach does that, his balls hang out. You don’t want to notice them, but you pretty much have to. They’re just this guy’s hairy balls, and you don’t look at them because you’re interested or anything, but how can you not notice them?

  November 2, 1986

  Chicago

  On my way to work I stopped at George’s, ordered a cheeseburger, and sat down. The place was empty except for me and a woman my age who wore tight blue slacks tucked into her boots, an expensive-looking sweater, and a coat with a jeweled medallion pinned to the lapel. She asked for the barbecued chicken and said to me, “Did you order fries? If not, you don’t have to because some are coming with my chicken and I don’t really want them.”

  I told her thanks, but I was already scheduled for some. When her order was ready, she brought it to my table, though there were a dozen unoccupied ones. Eating messy food like barbecued chicken really made her feel primitive, she said. Then she told me she lives on Dakin Avenue, in a building called Melissa-Ann, which sounded to her like a snack cake. She said she was a graphic designer and guessed I was an English major. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I bet you’re at…DePaul.”

  A mother walked into George’s just then and scolded her children for dawdling. “I could have cooked the fucking food myself in the time it’s taking you to order it,” she said.

  “Don’t you hate it when parents curse and don’t treat their children with respect?” the woman who lives on Dakin asked.

  I told her that my mother’s new favorite word is fuck but that she can’t figure out its place in a sentence. “She’ll say, ‘I don’t give a fucking darn what you think.’”

  The woman who lives on Dakin considered this. She tore her chicken from the bone with her fingers. I enjoyed her company, and I think she enjoyed mine, but we never introduced ourselves.

  November 3, 1986

  Chicago

  On the radio, someone was talking about cranes. The ones he’d studied had been taken from their mother at birth. At first they were raised by hand puppets, then later by men who were dressed like cranes. How does a man dress like a crane? I wondered. And are birds really dumb enough to fall for it?

  November 20, 1986

  Chicago

  Two women got on the train this morning and commenced to beautify themselves. They both put on makeup, then one of them sprayed her hair, which was flattened down on the back and sides and stood up on the top. One strand wouldn’t cooperate, so she went at it again and again, filling that car with that terrible smell and all the while talking to her friend.

  November 22, 1986

  Chicago

  Ronnie’s aunt Tessie used to take her to the Salvation Army in the Bronx and switch price tags. Tessie would pick discarded numbers off the floor of the butcher shop, saying, “Hey, what about me? I was here long before the rest of you.” Once, Ronnie and Tessie were in line at the grocery store. The kid in front of them asked his mother for some candy, and she answered, “No, it’ll ruin your appetite.”

  The child started crying, and Tessie butted in, saying, “So let him chew on it and then spit it out. Go ahead, give him some candy.”

  Eight years ago we visited her and her husband. Tessie made a big Italian dinner and later approached us, whispering, “Hey, youse don’t happen to have any marijuana, do you?”

  We said yes, and she asked for a joint, which she wanted to save for later. Here she was, my mother’s age!

  She died of a heart attack last week, and Ronnie wrote to tell me about it.

  November 25, 1986

  Chicago

  I stayed up all night rewriting my new story, which is better now. At two I heated up a couple of frozen potpies and made some crescent rolls. They came in a tube, but still I formed them on the baking tray. I thought I’d take a break from typing and eat in th
e living room in front of the television, so I put the food on a tray and then tripped while carrying it. The potpies skidded across the floor and flipped over when they hit the baseboard. Rather than cleaning it up right away, I let Neil eat as much of it as she wanted. I just took the crust and continued on to the living room, where I watched a rerun of The Odd Couple that guest-starred Marilyn Horne.

  When the show was over I went to clean up my mess and found that Neil had gotten most of it. If she were a dog, she’d have gotten all of it, but I’m happy with her as she is.

  November 28, 1986

  Chicago

  Yesterday was Thanksgiving and today the Christmas season officially started. To celebrate, we went to Daley Plaza and watched them light the big tree. A speaker announced that we had several important guests. One was Ronald McDonald, and another was someone named Mistletoe Bear. The third was the mayor. It was nice watching with Lisa, who arrived on Wednesday night. Amy and I went to the airport to collect her. O’Hare was packed. We met Lisa at her gate, and as we walked her to the baggage claim, Amy did this bit where she pretends she’s super-popular. “Hey, Sandy, great haircut!” she shouted at a stranger while waving. “Jim, I’ll call you!” “Hi, Nancy. Gotta go.” “Mike, yes, this is my sister.”