Abdill Career College Me Talk Pretty One Day 295 Essay Questions Questions for Study and Discussion Sedaris’s tone is humorous. (Glossary: Tone) What word
Abdill Career College Me Talk Pretty One Day 295 Essay Questions Questions for Study and Discussion
Sedaris’s tone is humorous. (Glossary: Tone) What words in par- ticular help him create this tone? Did you find yourself smiling or laughing out loud as you read his essay? If so, what specific pas- sages affected you this way?
What is your impression of Sedaris and his classmates? What words and phrases does he use to describe himself and them?
3. Why do you think Sedaris uses nonsense jumbles of letters— meismslsxp and palicmkrexjs, for example—in several places? How would his essay be different had he used the real words instead?
4. What does Sedaris realize in the final three paragraphs? What evidence does he provide of his realization?
David Sedaris was born in 1956 in Binghamton,
New York, and grew up in Raleigh, North
Carolina. He briefly attended Western Carolina
University and Kent State University but
ultimately graduated from the Art Institute of
Chicago in 1987. Before becoming a writer,
Sedaris worked as a mover, an office temp, a
housekeeper, and an elf in a department store
Christmas display, an experience he wrote
about in his celebrated essay “Santaland Diaries.” He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio, Harper’s, Details, the New Yorker, and Esquire and has won several awards, including the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Sedaris often writes about his quirky Greek family and his travels with his partner, Hugh Hamrick, with whom he currently lives in London. His essays and stories have been collected in several best-selling books, including Barrel Fever (1994), Holidays on Ice (1997), Naked (1997), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008), and most recently Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (2010).
The following essay about taking French language lessons in Paris first appeared in Esquire in March 1999 and later became the title piece for Sedaris’s fourth book, Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000). As you read, pay attention to how he uses his words to play with the ideas of language, understanding, and belonging.
Reflecting on What You Know
Have you ever been in a situation where you did not speak the prevalent language—for example, in a foreign country, a language class, or a group of people who spoke a language other than yours? How did you feel about not being able to communicate? How, if at all, did you get your thoughts across to others?
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Sedaris / Me Talk Pretty One Day 295
At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and having to 1 think of myself as what my French textbook calls “a true debu- tant.” After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows
me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what ap- pears to be a ham sandwich.
I’ve moved to Paris in order to learn the language. My school is 2 the Alliance Française, and on the first day of class, I arrived early, watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby. Vacations were recounted, and questions were raised concern-
ing mutual friends with names like Kang and Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students exhib- ited an ease and confidence I found intimidating. As an added dis- comfort, they were all young, attractive, and well dressed, causing me
to feel not unlike Pa Kettle1 trapped backstage after a fashion show.
I remind myself that I am now a full-grown man. No one will ever 3 again card me for a drink or demand that I weave a floor mat out of newspapers. At my age, a reasonable person should have completed his sentence in the prison of the nervous and the insecure—isn’t that the great promise of adulthood? I can’t help but think that, somewhere along the way, I made a wrong turn. My fears have not vanished. Rather, they have seasoned and multiplied with age. I am now twice as frightened as I was when, at the age of twenty, I allowed a failed nurs-
ing student to inject me with a horse tranquilizer, and eight times more anxious than I was the day my kindergarten teacher pried my fingers off my mother’s ankle and led me screaming toward my desk. “You’ll get used to it,” the woman had said.
I’m still waiting. 4
The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I’d be 5 expected to perform. That’s the way they do it here — everyone into the language pool, sink or swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a recent vacation, and rattled off a series of administrative announcements. I’ve spent some time in Normandy,2 and I took a monthlong French class last summer in New York. I’m not completely
in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this teacher was saying.
1Pa Kettle: someone who is simple or unsophisticated; the name of a character in a series of comic movies popular in the 1950s.
2Normandy: a province in northwestern France.“If you have not meismslsxp by this time, you should not be in 6 this room. Has everybody apzkiubjxow? Everyone? Good, we shall proceed.” She spread out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, “All right, then, who knows the alphabet?”
It was startling because a) I hadn’t been asked that question in a 7 while, and b) I realized, while laughing, that I myself did not know the alphabet. They’re the same letters, but they’re pronounced differently.
“Ahh.” The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter A. “Do 8 we have anyone in the room whose first name commences with an ahh?”
Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teacher instructed 9 them to present themselves, giving their names, nationalities, occupa- tions, and a list of things they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna hailed from an industrial town outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked as a seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.
“Oh, really,” the teacher said. “How very interesting. I thought 10 that everyone loved the mosquito, but here, in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it that we’ve been blessed with some- one as unique and original as you? Tell us, please.”
The seamstress did not understand what was being said, but she 11 knew that this was an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed
for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks.
The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sun- 12 shine and detest lies. It sounded like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the answers always written in the same loopy handwriting: “Turn-ons: Mom’s famous five-alarm chili! Turnoffs: Insincerity and guys who come on too strong!!!”
The two Polish women surely had clear notions of what they 13 liked and disliked, but, like the rest of us, they were limited in terms
of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than sophisticated. The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandoneon3 player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, “Making sex with the women of the world.” Next came a beautiful young Yugoslavian who identified herself as an optimist, saying that she loved everything life had to offer.
The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the sadist4 we would 14 later come to know. She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands
3bandoneon: a small accordion popular in South America. 4sadist: one who finds pleasure in being cruel to others.
Sedaris / Me Talk Pretty One Day 297
on the young woman’s desk, and said, “Oh, yeah? And do you love your little war?”5
While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to 15 think of an answer to what had obviously become a trick question. How often are you asked what you love in this world? More impor- tant, how often are you asked and then publicly ridiculed for your answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine, pounding the table late one night, saying, “Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love . . .” My sisters and I leaned forward, waiting
to hear our names. “Tums,” our mother said. “I love Tums.” The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of mastermind- ing a program of genocide, and I jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can honestly say that I love leafing through medi- cal textbooks devoted to severe dermatological conditions, it is be- yond the reach of my French vocabulary, and acting it out would only have invited unwanted attention.
When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things I detest: 16 blood sausage, intestinal paté, brain pudding. I’d learned these words the hard way. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love
for IBM typewriters, the French word for “bruise,” and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed to mispronounce IBM and afford the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. Her reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France.
“Were you always this palicmkrexjs?” she asked. “Even a fiu- 17 scrzsws tociwegixp knows that a typewriter is feminine.”
I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking, 18 but not saying, that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inani- mate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never deliver in the sack?
The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, 19 who hated laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch, Korean, Chinese—we all left class fool- ishly believing that the worst was over. We didn’t know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it is like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal. We soon learned to dodge chalk and to cover our heads and stomachs whenever she approached us with a
5“. . . your little war”: the Balkan War (1991–2001), armed conflict and genocide in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.question. She hadn’t yet punched anyone, but it seemed wise to prepare ourselves against the inevitable.Classroom Activity Using Diction and Tone
Many restaurant menus use connotative language in an attempt to persuade patrons that they are about to have an exceptional dining experience: “skillfully seasoned,” “festive and spicy,” “fresh from the garden,” “grilled to perfection,” “freshly ground.” Imagine that you are charged with the task of creating such a menu. Use connotative lan- guage to describe the following basic foods, making them sound as attractive and inviting as possible.
tomato juice onion soup ground beef chicken
peas
potatoes
salad
bread and butter
pasta
ice cream tea
cake
Suggested Writing Assignments
Write a narrative essay recounting a humorous incident in your life. (Glossary: Narration) Use the following questions to start thinking about the incident: Where were you? What happened? Who witnessed the incident? Did you think it was humorous at the time? Do you view it differently now? Why or why not? Choose words and phrases for your narrative that convey a humorous tone. (Glossary: Tone)
“Refusing to stand convicted on the teacher’s charges of laziness,” Sedaris explains, “I’d spend four hours a night on my homework, working even longer whenever we were assigned an essay” (23). Write an essay in which you evaluate Sedaris’s teacher. Given that she inspired Sedaris to apply himself to his work, do you think she was an effective teacher? Would her methods have the same effect on you? Why or why not? (Glossary: Cause and Effect)
Sedaris / Me Talk Pretty One Day 301
3. As Sedaris’s essay and the following cartoon illustrate, fitting in often depends on our ability to communicate with authenticity — using the appropriate pronunciation, terminology, or slang—to a particular audience. (Glossary: Audience; Slang) Have you ever felt alienated by a group because you didn’t use its lingo appro- priately, or have you ever alienated someone else for the same reason? Write a narrative essay in which you recount one such event. (Glossary: Narration) Be sure to use diction and tone cre- atively to convey your meaning. Before you begin, you might find it helpful to refer to your response to the prereading prompt for this selection.
Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the 20 teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.
“I hate you,” she said to me one afternoon. Her English was 21 flawless. “I really, really hate you.” Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t help taking it personally.
Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a 22 long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn’t just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encoun- ters with my local butcher and the concierge6 of my building, I’d head
off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, “Here’s proof that David is an igno- rant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx.”
Refusing to stand convicted on the teacher’s charges of laziness, I’d 23 spend four hours a night on my homework, working even longer when- ever we were assigned an essay. I suppose I could have gotten by with less, but I was determined to create some sort of an identity for myself. We’d have one of those “complete the sentence” exercises, and I’d fool with the thing for hours, invariably settling on something like, “A quick run around the lake? I’d love to. Just give me a minute to strap on my wooden leg.” The teacher, through word and action, conveyed the message that,
if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do with it.
My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of my classroom 24
and accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards, where, no matter how hard I tried, there was no escaping the feeling of terror I felt whenever anyone asked me a question. I was safe in any kind of a store, as, at least in my neighborhood, one can stand beside the cash register for hours on end without being asked something so trivial as, “May I help you?” or “How would you like to pay for that?”
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. 25 Huddled in the smoky hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.
“Sometimes me cry alone at night.” 26
“That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much 27 work, and someday you talk pretty. People stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
6concierge: a doorman in a French apartment building.
Sedaris / Me Talk Pretty One Day 299
Unlike other classes I have taken, here there was no sense of com- 28 petition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean woman in the eyelid with a freshly sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all knew the irregular past tense of the verb “to defeat.” In all fairness, the teacher hadn’t meant to hurt the woman, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, “Well, you should have been paying more attention.”
Over time, it became impossible to believe that any of us would 29 ever improve. Fall arrived, and it rained every day. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, “Every day spent with you
is like having a cesarean section.” And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.
Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the 30 language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe, and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.
“You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts 31 with nothing but pain, do you understand me?”
The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, 32 “I know the thing what you speak exact now. Talk me more, plus, please, plus.”
Thinking Critically about This Reading
Sedaris’s French teacher tells him that “every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section” (paragraph 29). Why is Sedaris’s ability to recount this insult significant? What does the teacher’s “cesarean section” metaphor mean?
