Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

This town is the Greek Baltimore.

This place makes me feel stoned.

I didn’t correct him because of the way he said it, the word Jew spat out as if it were leper. Both of us walked away then, though I swear I did it first.

the new guy mentioned an audiobook on World War II. Then Billy said, yelling, “Now those German people, they talk ugly! Sounds like everything they have to say is just pure meanness. I bet they can sure give somebody hell. Same with those Japanese.”

This is my twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve been anticipating this age for a long time, thinking that when I reach it, I’ll make a big change. I seem old to me now.

At the DC station I bought a Coke from a vending machine that talked. That was a first. My three days visiting Allyn in Pittsburgh were a blur—smoked a lot of pot, snorted a good deal of cocaine, which never really agrees with me.

On leaving the reception tonight, I saw a man sitting on a stool. He’d removed his artificial legs, which were lying on the ground beside him. What a place!

it’s eight blocks from an IHOP that looks exactly like the one I left behind in Raleigh, both inside and out.

After looking at sixteen apartments, some so small I could heat them with a candle

Our first assignment from him is to collect overheard sentences and shape them into a dialogue. Then we’re to find a scrap of something measuring four by five feet and slap a word or image on it.

Ken said that school is one of the few places—perhaps the only place—where we’ll find people who are interested in what we have to say. He’s sort of a pessimist that way.

I returned to find a group of kids playing in the hall. When I unlocked my door they rushed in behind me and ran all over the place. None of them speak English, so I had to scold them in Spanish, which made them laugh.

The program airs on Sunday nights and reminds me every week that I’m not in North Carolina anymore.

general problems and miserabilia.

There’s a big argument going on next door in Spanish. I can make out two words: whore and shoe.

All day long I fend off people who want my cigarettes. It’s not right that I should lose the battle in my very own home.

They had ordered hamburgers and kept pestering her as to their whereabouts. Were those them, under the heat lamp? They better not be!

She was dressed in a suit and was so clearly not a prostitute, it was ridiculous.

weren’t sure where the laughs might come. Plus we’d rehearsed for so long, we’d forgotten certain things were funny.

T. criticized people who think realism is using the word shit. She went on and on until someone told her to shut up. Then she put her head on her desk and fell asleep. She even snored.

greatest joys of a man’s life. My favorite couple sat not far away. They’re old, and it took me months to figure out if

I think hers is what you call a checkered career.

October 1, 1985 Chicago I read a National Examiner article about Christina Onassis, who has apparently gone to a weight-reduction farm. She’s trying her best, but still they referred to her as a “lardy lass” and, worse still, “that Greek tanker.”

Be kind! She'd just had her baby, Athina, at the end of that January!

I can never step back and see the whole picture. Instead I concentrate on a little square and realize later that it looks nothing like the real live object. Maybe it’s my strength, and I’m the only one who can’t see it.

October 20, 1985 Chicago On Thursday the Cherokee Nation elected their first woman leader. Her name is Wilma Mankiller.

In the park I bought dope. There was a bench nearby, so I sat down for a while and took in the perfect fall day. Then I came home and carved the word failure into a pumpkin.

The longer I’m in school, the more exhausting these critiques become. I went overboard, I think, but it wasn’t until later, getting high at home, that I realized how embarrassed I should be.

I bought a bar of Fiesta brand soap, which is horrible but costs only 20 cents. I used it last night and still smell like one of those deodorizing pucks they put in the urinals at gas stations.

“That’s her story, if you want to believe it,” Mom said when she called to tell me about it. Anything could have happened to Tiffany. She has such an adventurous life.

This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.

it felt just the way I always imagined it would. I was stunned. Now there’s a bleeding lump the size of a small egg on the top of my head. It’s what a cartoon character would have, only it’s me.

Do you see what I’m talking about? I wouldn’t go into the place, but I got a lot of friends there.”

One of the people I voted for this morning was named Lee Botts. Her campaign slogan is HER BOTTOM LINE IS CLEAN WATER. Someone tampered with the sign she had in front of the school, and now it reads LEE BOTTS. HER BOTTOM IS CLEAN.

While we ate, Indian prom couples paraded up and down the street. They were kids, and they looked great, so sophisticated. We’d just finished when a woman wandered in and approached our table for money. She wore a scarf on her head, pulled down low enough to cover her eyebrows. “Are youse people familiar with this neighborhood?” she asked. “’Cause I’m scared stiff.” This stretch of Devon Avenue, in the thick of an Indian neighborhood, is the last place to be frightened.

Not that I would have, it was just an idea, and such a cruel one it made me blush.

“She was always baking potatoes,” he told us. “All hours of the day. One night she put two or three in the oven and then fell asleep. I got up the next morning and those potatoes was baked, roasted, broasted, I don’t know what all, but they was burnt and black.”

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Delinquent style is timeless. Real trouble doesn’t walk around with a ponytail. It doesn’t have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.

person would be in pretty serious trouble if his graduation gown no longer fit. It’s like outgrowing a tent, basically.

“This here’s a working man.” I haven’t worked in more than three weeks, but it was nice to be mistaken for someone with a job.

Why did I have to break that window, and on a dare, for God’s sake?

The service elevator is like riding in a cat-food can.

The woman was drinking beer and playing pinball, fighting the machine but never calling it names.

What I like about Montrose Beach is that all the loud music is in another language.

That would be interesting!

He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.

It was another of those programs about how people with station wagons solve problems.