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Authors: David Sedaris
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agreed, a loan, but at the end of the spring term she gave it to her roommate, who died in a car accident while driving home to Pennsylvania. On hearing the news, I imagined her parents, this couple in their mind-boggling grief, coming upon the bear in the trunk of their daughter’s car and wondering what it had to do with her, or anybody’s, life.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
The Change in Me
Y OU KNOW YOU’RE YOUNG when someone asks you for money and you take it as a compliment.
“You look pretty cool, can I ask you a question?”
The beggar was a girl in her late teens, a hippie standing outside the convenience store at the North Hills shopping center. She wore a peasant blouse and long, elephant-belled jeans that made it appear as though she had no feet. Granny glasses, amulets, a beaded headband: I couldn’t believe that someone so sophisticated was actually talking to me.
I was thirteen that summer and had ridden to the Kwik Pik with my mother, who handed me a ten-dollar bill and asked me to run in for a carton of cigarettes. She watched the hippie ask me a question, watched me run into the store, and watched me stop on the way out to hand the girl a dollar.
“What was that?” she asked when I got back into the car. “Who was that girl?” Had I been with my father, I would have lied, saying she was a friend, but my mother knew I had no interesting friends, and so I told the truth.
“You didn’t give her a dollar,” she said. “You gave her my dollar.”
“But she needed it.”
“What for?” my mother said. “Shampoo? A needle and thread?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Being mocked by the untalented was easy to brush off, but my mother was really good at imitating people. Coming from her, I sounded spoiled and vacant, like a Persian cat, only human. “If you want to give her a dollar, that’s your own business,” she said. “But that dollar was mine, and I want it back.”
I offered to pay her when we got home, but that wasn’t good enough. “I don’t want just any old dollar,” she said, “I want that one.”
It was ridiculous to claim an attachment to a particular dollar bill, but for my mother this had become a matter of principle. “It’s my dollar and I want it back.”
When I told her it was too late, she got out and opened my car door. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” she said.
The hippie looked over in our direction, and I lowered myself in the seat. “Mom, please. You can’t do this.” It was touch-and-go for a moment, but I knew she’d stop short of actually dragging me from the station wagon. “Can’t we put this behind us? I’ll pay you back when we get home. Really, I swear.”
She watched me cower and then she got back into the driver’s seat. “You think everyone who asks for money actually needs it? God, are you gullible.”
The spare-change girl seemed to have started a trend. On my next trip to the Kwik Pik I was hit up by another hippie — this one a guy — who squatted on the ground in front of the ice machine. He saw me approach and held out his leather hat. “Greetings, brother,” he said. “Think you could manage to help a friend?”
I handed over the fifty cents I’d planned to spend on Coke and potato chips, and then I leaned against a post, watching this hippie and studying his ways. Some people, the cool people who had no extra money, made it a point to say, “Sorry, man,” or “You know how it is.” The hippie would nod, as if to familiar music, and the cool person would do the same. The uncool people passed without stopping, but still you could see that the hippie held a strange power over them. “Spare change? A dime? A quarter?” It was a small amount that asked a big question: “Care ye not about your fellow man?” It helped, I thought, that he bore such a striking resemblance to Jesus, who was rumored to be returning any day now.
I watched for half an hour, and then the
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
The Change in Me
Y OU KNOW YOU’RE YOUNG when someone asks you for money and you take it as a compliment.
“You look pretty cool, can I ask you a question?”
The beggar was a girl in her late teens, a hippie standing outside the convenience store at the North Hills shopping center. She wore a peasant blouse and long, elephant-belled jeans that made it appear as though she had no feet. Granny glasses, amulets, a beaded headband: I couldn’t believe that someone so sophisticated was actually talking to me.
I was thirteen that summer and had ridden to the Kwik Pik with my mother, who handed me a ten-dollar bill and asked me to run in for a carton of cigarettes. She watched the hippie ask me a question, watched me run into the store, and watched me stop on the way out to hand the girl a dollar.
“What was that?” she asked when I got back into the car. “Who was that girl?” Had I been with my father, I would have lied, saying she was a friend, but my mother knew I had no interesting friends, and so I told the truth.
“You didn’t give her a dollar,” she said. “You gave her my dollar.”
“But she needed it.”
“What for?” my mother said. “Shampoo? A needle and thread?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Being mocked by the untalented was easy to brush off, but my mother was really good at imitating people. Coming from her, I sounded spoiled and vacant, like a Persian cat, only human. “If you want to give her a dollar, that’s your own business,” she said. “But that dollar was mine, and I want it back.”
I offered to pay her when we got home, but that wasn’t good enough. “I don’t want just any old dollar,” she said, “I want that one.”
It was ridiculous to claim an attachment to a particular dollar bill, but for my mother this had become a matter of principle. “It’s my dollar and I want it back.”
When I told her it was too late, she got out and opened my car door. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” she said.
The hippie looked over in our direction, and I lowered myself in the seat. “Mom, please. You can’t do this.” It was touch-and-go for a moment, but I knew she’d stop short of actually dragging me from the station wagon. “Can’t we put this behind us? I’ll pay you back when we get home. Really, I swear.”
She watched me cower and then she got back into the driver’s seat. “You think everyone who asks for money actually needs it? God, are you gullible.”
The spare-change girl seemed to have started a trend. On my next trip to the Kwik Pik I was hit up by another hippie — this one a guy — who squatted on the ground in front of the ice machine. He saw me approach and held out his leather hat. “Greetings, brother,” he said. “Think you could manage to help a friend?”
I handed over the fifty cents I’d planned to spend on Coke and potato chips, and then I leaned against a post, watching this hippie and studying his ways. Some people, the cool people who had no extra money, made it a point to say, “Sorry, man,” or “You know how it is.” The hippie would nod, as if to familiar music, and the cool person would do the same. The uncool people passed without stopping, but still you could see that the hippie held a strange power over them. “Spare change? A dime? A quarter?” It was a small amount that asked a big question: “Care ye not about your fellow man?” It helped, I thought, that he bore such a striking resemblance to Jesus, who was rumored to be returning any day now.
I watched for half an hour, and then the
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