Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

favorite actresses.
I went to the beach at Montrose Harbor and sat on a towel for a while. People there barbecue and
then dump their hot coals on the grass and drive away, leaving everything else behind. They throw
garbage into the lake just to watch it float. Children swim in the shallow water and pull soiled
Pampers up from the bottom. What I like about Montrose Beach is that all the loud music is in another
language.
Bad teenagers hang out in the alley behind our building, and whenever they see me on my bike they
call me Pee-wee, after Pee-wee Herman, because I have an old one-speed that cost $8. It gets on my
nerves, but if I had a better bike they’d just steal it.
June 16, 1987
Chicago
I had an elaborate fantasy yesterday after the kids called me Pee-wee again. I kept thinking how
great it would be to follow them home, buy their apartment buildings, and evict them. I don’t know
what I would do with the buildings after I bought them. I wasn’t thinking that clearly.
June 19, 1987
Chicago
I ran into Walt on the L this morning. He owes me $450 and said he was just going to call me the
other day because Gail, his wife, is always saying, “We need to pay that David Sedaris.”
I actually don’t hold anything against him. I miss Walt and Gail. Walt said that last week she got a
profit-sharing check for $10,000. That was why he planned to call—to pay me. He said he took the
check to the bank but lost it along the way. It was physically big, he told me. “I folded it in my top
pocket, and wouldn’t you know!”
He called the bank to cancel it, then he called New York for a replacement check, but the woman
whose job it would be to write it was on vacation. “Wouldn’t you know it!”
At around five, I took the L home. A woman near me had a three-year-old child on her lap, a girl,
who looked at me and said, “Mommy, I hate that man.”
Hours later, walking up Leland, I heard someone running up behind me. It was a guy who lives in
the halfway house next door. He is black and wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the
neck. The man called me sir and asked how I was doing.
“All right,” I said.
He told me that he had a taste for a steak sandwich and asked me if I’d buy him one. You can’t pull
money out of your pocket on Leland Avenue. It’s like ringing a bell, so I said no and he ran across the
street to ask a woman the same question.
Later still I saw two men sitting in a car in front of the halfway house. They had the door open and