DAVID SEDARIS

Recommendations

Info

fences around the back yards. They didn’t look exactly like American houses, but I couldn’t quite identify the difference. Was it the roofs? I wondered. The siding? Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove. “Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter. This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two. Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success. I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you?” I thought for a moment, and said that I’d cut off my 16
friends. “It’s nothing to be proud of, but after meeting Hugh I quit making an effort.” “And what else?” she asked. “Health, I guess.” Hugh’s answer was work. “And?” “Just work,” he said. I asked Pat why she’d cut off her family, and with no trace of bitterness she talked about her parents, both severe alcoholics. They drank away their jobs and credit, and because they were broke they moved a lot, most often in the middle of the night. This made it hard to have a pet, though for a short time Pat and her sister managed to own a sheep. It was an old, beat-up ram they named Mr. Preston. “He was lovely and good-natured, until my father sent him off to be shorn,” Pat said.“When he returned, there were bald patches and horrible deep cuts, like stab wounds, in his skin. Then we moved to an apartment, and had to get rid of him.” She looked at her hands on the steering wheel. “Poor old Mr. Preston. I hadn’t thought about him in years.” It was around this time that we finally entered the bush. Hugh pointed out the window, at a lump of 17
Page 1: What About Understanding Owls? a co
Page 7 and 8: What About Understanding Owls? a co
Page 9: Dedicated to my A dva nc e d P ro b
Page 12 and 13: LAUGH, KOOKABURRA from Let’s Expl
Page 15: countryside. Hugh and I didn’t se
Page 19 and 20: called Daylesford, which looked, wh
Page 21 and 22: “Is that normal in Australia?”
Page 23 and 24: his third helping, I got used to th
Page 25 and 26: was the innocence of it. If I had c
Page 27 and 28: in on my upper thigh. Whap, whap, w
Page 30 and 31: - UNDERSTANDING OWLS from Let’s E
Page 33 and 34: ceiling, and if she wanted turkey v
Page 35 and 36: the old ones are. The store was ope
Page 37 and 38: owls, each mounted to a stump and s
Page 39 and 40: forearm, complete with little hairs
Page 41 and 42: dry and thin, like leather on an ol
Page 43 and 44: wasn’t heavy—in fact, it was su
Page 46 and 47: - TRICKED from Dress Your Family in
Page 48 and 49: not believe in television, my fathe
Page 50 and 51: intelligent and considerably more f
Page 52 and 53: always had, but the son and daughte
Page 54 and 55: my candy keep out!
Page 56 and 57: doorknob, I tore off the wrappers a
Page 58 and 59: and of how alone and out of place t
Page 60: colophon This book was created by A

DAVID SEDARIS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?