Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

nigger!” The black kid took off his belt and charged, swinging it above his head, but the white guy just
grabbed it. The two friends, meanwhile, hung back and laughed.
August 28, 1990
Raleigh
Dad, Paul, and I spent eighteen hours in the front seat of a Toyota pickup truck. Eighteen hours
through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and North Carolina. At one point I fell asleep.
Paul reached into my Dopp kit then, got out my shaving cream, and covered a good three-quarters of
my face before I woke up. Later he elbowed me in the ribs while I was pouring coffee. It went from
the thermos to my bare legs and burned me. If I tried to read a magazine, he’d take the page and
crumple it up. He dumped a cup of water over my head. He grabbed the skin beneath my arm and
twisted it until I begged for mercy. The three of us were crowded together side by side. It was hot, but
I never lost my temper. It was all funny to me, and I laughed while Dad drove and we all three
listened to the radio.
August 30, 1990
Raleigh
I told Melina, my parents’ Great Dane, that we were going to have her put to sleep on Saturday,
and Dad got super-angry. As if she could understand me! So I said to her, “OK, we’ll wait until
Monday.” This made him even angrier, and he ordered me to leave his house.
Yesterday I told him I’d ridden my bike to the grocery store and bought a chicken.
“No, you didn’t,” he said. The chicken was right there on the counter, along with the receipt, but
still he insisted for absolutely no reason that I hadn’t bought it. He refuses to be wrong.
August 31, 1990
Raleigh
I would rather be a Klansman
In a robe of snowy white,
Than to be a Catholic priest
In a robe as black as night;
For a Klansman is AMERICAN
And AMERICA is his home,
But a priest owes his allegiance
To a Dago Pope in Rome.
That’s a 1925 Klan song verse in the Jean Stafford biography I’m reading. Like many good
biography subjects, she became a mess toward the end of her life. One of her last ideas was for a