Naked

by David Sedaris

After a while we began to wonder if my father had any friends who could still tie their own shoes or breathe without the aid of a respirator. With the exception of the shoe salesman, we’d never seen any of these people, only heard about them whenever one of us attempted to deep-fry chicken or operate the garbage disposal. “I’ve got a friend who buys a set of gloves and throws one of them away. He lost his right hand doing the exact same thing you’re doing. He had his arm down the drain when the cat rubbed against the switch to the garbage disposal. Now he’s wearing clip-on ties and having the restaurant waiters cut up his steak. Is that the kind of life you want for yourself?” He allowed me to mow the lawn only because he was too cheap to pay a landscaper and didn’t want to do it himself. “What happened,” he said, “is that the guy slipped, probably on a pile of crap, and his leg got caught up in the blade. He found his foot, carried it to the hospital, but it was too late to sew it back on. Can you imagine that? The guy drove fifteen, twenty miles with his foot in his lap.”