DAVID SEDARIS

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dressed in his standard around‐the‐house outfit, which is to say, his underpants. No matter the season, he wore them without a shirt or socks, the way a toddler might pad about in a diaper. For as long as any of us could remember, this was the way it went: he returned home from work and stepped out of his slacks, sighing with relief, as if they were oppressive, like high heels. All said, my father looked good in his underpants, better than the guys in the Penney’s catalogue, who were, in my opinion, consistently weak in the leg department. Silhouetted in the doorway, he resembled a wrestler. Maybe not one in tip-top condition, but he was closer than any of the other dads on our street. “It’s one o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake. David, get to your room.” Lou Sedaris claiming it was 1 a.m. meant that it was, at best, ten-thirty. Still, though, there was no point in arguing. Down in the basement, I went to my room and he resumed his position in front of the tv. Within a few minutes he was snoring, and I crept back upstairs to join Amy for another twenty rounds. “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he—” It didn’t take long for our father to rally. “Did I not tell you to go to your room?” What would strike me afterward 24
was the innocence of it. If I had children and they stayed up late, singing a song about a bird, I believe I would find it charming. “I knew I had those two for a reason,” I think I’d say to myself. I might go so far as to secretly record them, and submit the tape in a My Kids Are Cuter Than Yours competition. My dad, by contrast, clearly didn’t see it that way, which was strange to me. It’s not like we were ruining his tv reception. He couldn’t even hear us from that distance, so what did he have to complain about? “All right, sonny, I’m giving you ten seconds. One. Two …” I guess what he resented was being dismissed. Had our mother told us to shut up, we’d probably have done it. He, on the other hand, sitting around in his underpants—it just didn’t seem that important. At the count of six, I pushed back the covers. “I’m going,” I spat, and once again I followed my father downstairs. Ten minutes later, I was back. Amy cleared a space for me, and we picked up where we had left off. “Laugh, Kookaburra! Laugh, Kookaburra! Gay your life must be.” Actually, maybe it was that last bit that bothered him. An eleven-year-old boy in bed with his sister, not just 25
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 and 16: countryside. Hugh and I didn’t se
Page 17 and 18: friends. “It’s nothing to be pr
Page 19 and 20: called Daylesford, which looked, wh
Page 21 and 22: “Is that normal in Australia?”
Page 23: his third helping, I got used to th
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

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