Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

Someone told me that Minneapolis, where I was yesterday, is the slimmest city in the United
States. I don’t know if that’s true, but it did have a Laundromat called the Spin Cycle. I also passed a
gift shop called the Caardvark. I did a reading at a gay bookstore called a Brother’s Touch. It was
what I’d feared it might be, lots of rainbow-striped flags and wind socks. My mike was set up in the
magazine section, so behind me were pictures of all sorts of men, some in jockstraps, some with gags
that looked like Ping-Pong balls in their mouths. What killed me, though, was the incense, which was
coconut, I think.
March 29, 1997
Atlanta, Georgia
The Cedar Rapids airport was decorated for Easter. They’d put plastic grass, marshmallow
chicks, and plastic eggs atop the X-ray scanner, and I was looking at them when one of the guards, a
young woman, asked to check my bag. She found the bottle of Scotch that Little, Brown had sent me
and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to have to pour this out.”
I thought that maybe this was a rule in Iowa, but then her boss stepped over and said, “No, Tanya,
you don’t pour it out. You just need to smell it and make certain it’s not gasoline.”
“Really? I’ve been pouring it out for the last two months!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have been,” her supervisor told her.
The woman named Tanya opened my bottle of Scotch, held it to her nose, and winced. “Now I got
liquor on my hands,” she said. “Great!”
Her supervisor rolled her eyes. “Oh, just go over to the fountain, add a little water, and have a
drink,” she said, sighing. “It’ll do you some good.”
April 13, 1997
Portland
This morning at the Seattle airport I saw a kid, maybe ten years old, jerking his head every fifteen
seconds or so. It was like seeing myself as a boy. His father said, “Aaron, I’m warning you…” I
wanted to rush over and scoop the kid up.
May 10, 1997
New York
I finished Nickel Dreams, the new Tanya Tucker autobiography. Every time she used the phrase
“my new friend,” I pulled out my pen, knowing there would be a great name coming. The book is full
of them, my favorites being Peanutt Montgomery, Sonny Throckmorton, Michael Smotherman, Dave
Dudley, and Sheila Slaughter.