Me Talk Pretty One Day Essay

David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day revisits his oh, so comical childhood years in a household of six children, including himself, with the combination of a sometimes loudmouthed mother and a father who loves his jazz and his vodka. Me Talk Pretty One Day opens to a story line as if it came straight of a movie: an agent knocking a classroom door to pick up a suspected criminal. But after learning that the agent was actually a speech therapist trying to cure young David's lisp, that fear was gone. Along came a series of hilarious stories about the speech therapy classes, or a series of "de-gaying" classes as Sedaris saw them.

If you can not tell already, I am more than fond of this book. Sedaris takes us back into his childhood in the first half, then takes us along with him and his boyfriend to France in the second half. Sedaris isnt afraid to poke fun at himself and his family, as we could tell from the very first essay. Which he dedicated to his eclectic mother, then having other essays dedicated to his father and redneck brother. He writes about everything from his trials and tribulations of growing up gay and Greek in North Carolina, to his French adventures with his boyfriend and having to dealing with the defaming of American tourist.

Later we are launched into a story about his vodka/jazz loving father and his desire in turning his kids into musical prodigies after attending a concert. After a few uneventful music lessons, our narrator decides to impress his midget teacher, Mr. Mancini. But he resulted with a less than successful singing number. Mr. Mancini then becomes unsettled by Sedaris's flamboyancy, and thats when the gay-ness alI started.

The chapter devoted to Sedaris's brother Paul was absolutely amazing. And it was, hands down, one of my favorites. Paul was the only Sedaris to be born and bred in North Carolina, the rest were born in New York. Hes the epitome of a sounthern redneck, going by the nick-name Silly P. Being the last kid to be born out of the six, Paul very everything but classy. With his fathers high expectations this is how he would normally react, Short and sweet, repeated at a fever pitch, it goes simply, "Fuck it," or on one of his more articulate days, "Fuck it, motherfucker. That shit don't mean fuck to me."

Me Talk Pretty One Day culminates in France, where Sedaris goes with his boyfriend, Hugh, to encounter everything from failed French lessons to their encounter with American tourist. One of my favorite lines was when David tried explaining to the reader about the two types of tourist, There Are, I Have Noticed, two basic types of French spoken by Americans vacationing in Paris: the Hard Kind and the Easy Kind. The Hard Kind involves the conjugation of wily verbs and the science of placing them alongside various other words in order to form such sentences as I go him say good afternoon and No, not to him I no go it him say now." And he continues, The second, less complicated form of French amounts to screaming English at the top of your lungs, much the same way you'd shout at a deaf person or the dog you thought you could train to stay off the sofa. Doubt and hesitation are completely unnecessary, as Easy French is rooted in the premise that, if properly packed, the rest of the world could fit within the confines of Reno, Nevada. The speaker carries no pocket dictionary and never suffers the humiliation that inevitably comes with pointing to the menu and ordering the day of the week. With Easy French, eating out involves a simple BRING ME A STEAK.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is a comical series of essays written by David Sedaris, reflecting on his childhood and his current relationship with Hugh. It brought out my inner child, and made me fall out of my chair due to laughing. Although most of the dilemmas were unfortunate for Sedaris, it was fortunate for the reader. The only thing I would recommend is to read NAKED by David Sedaris before reading this book. NAKED is the first book of the series, and also contains the same amount of madness.