Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

I’ve been working on a new story and have pages of IHOP notes spread before me that I can’t
read. One says gammerstrayer.jermei.
Oprah had a show about people who have forgiven the unforgivable. One girl forgave the fellow who
stabbed her twenty times and then stabbed her father, a minister, to death. She had pleaded for a stay
of execution, as had the man whose grandmother was stabbed to death by a gang of teenage girls. I
remember when that case was all over the news. The grandmother who was murdered taught a Bible
studies class.
A woman on the panel forgave the man who killed her son while driving drunk on Christmas Eve.
He’s a frequent visitor at her home now.
There were two other guests, a woman who would never forgive the man who raped and drowned
her sister, and a black woman who was shot in the stomach by gang members who then molested her
daughter. She said she could hear the girl crying out, and Oprah said, “Did you help her?”
“No,” the woman said, perhaps feeling put on the spot. “I was shot and bleeding profusely.” She
explained that she still has a bullet lodged in her kidney and doesn’t see the sense in forgiving
anybody. “Hate is what’s kept me alive,” she said.
In today’s paper I read about a six-year-old girl who was stabbed seventeen times by her mother’s
cousin. He was looking for money, apparently. I’m always struck by how many times people get
stabbed. It seems like it’s never just once or twice. It must be one of those activities that, once you get
started, you just can’t stop. The girl lived, but according to her grandmother, after the stabbing she
developed a mean streak and is bossy now and picks fights.
July 29, 1988
Chicago
The subject on Oprah was profound handicaps. Two of the guests were parents of a teenage boy
who weighs only thirty-six pounds. He is blind and dumb and now has impaired hearing due to an ear
infection. He doesn’t have any thoughts that they are aware of, and he lives at home.
The father explained that the government will only pay SSI if you make under $17,000 a year. He
advocated for a national catastrophic health plan and that was fine, but he wouldn’t stop talking about
it. He said his daughter has diabetes and that his other daughter almost had cancer. Again and again he
interrupted his fellow guests, and in time I grew tired of him.
In the middle of the show, Oprah brought out a twenty-four-year-old man. She said, “Jimmy, here
you are. You have no arms. You have no legs. What keeps you going?”
Jimmy was optimistic and spoke about his life at the university where he studies child psychology.
He kept saying that: the university. He said that his roommate in the dorm keeps the TV and radio and
computer on the floor so he can get to them. Jimmy’s neck was thick and muscular. He wore a suit
with the arms and legs pinned up.
Another guest, a young woman, had all her limbs but they were too small. She could walk but
needed crutches for long distances. Forks she could manage, and light loads. She said she wanted to