Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

July 20, 1998
New York
Class was strange today. We spent ten minutes on the future tense before switching to reflexive
verbs. The teacher asked if there were any questions and someone asked where she had learned her
Spanish. She told us her husband is Puerto Rican, so she’d picked it up from him. Then someone
asked how long she’d lived in Paris. I then asked where she lived before moving to Paris, and when
she said Morocco, everyone started in. “Where do your parents live? What does your father do?”
The Brazilian who never does his homework turned on us then, saying, “What you’re doing is very
rude.”
Sharon explained that we meant no offense and that Americans are sometimes too open. I added
that to us, her life was very exotic, and we were just curious. I mean, really, it’s not like we asked
whether she uses a tampon or a pad.
August 3, 1998
La Bagotière
Hugh, Dennis, and I flew TWA from New York to Paris, and the plane was either half empty or
half full, depending on how you look at it. I sat beside a stylish woman from the Upper West Side who
was maybe sixty and who said after takeoff, “All right, I’m going to tell you one story and then I’m
going to shut up.”
The story was about a tattooed passenger on a crosstown bus who had a boa constrictor beneath
her blouse, wrapped around her like a bandage. It was good, and as I listened I thought of the coming
year in France and wondered when I’d next understand everything a stranger was saying to me. The
New York class helped some. At de Gaulle we got a cab driven by a cheerful black man who spoke
with great passion about two accidents he’d witnessed earlier that morning. It took an hour to reach
the Montparnasse station, where we caught the train to Normandy. We boarded early, and as I stepped
out onto the platform for a cigarette, an old woman asked if I would carry her bag up the stairs. I did,
and she tried to give me 5 francs. Of course I turned it down, but seeing as I no longer have a job and
have no working papers, I probably should have taken it.
We’re fine here for the month of August, but then I need to start French school, which will mean
finding an apartment in Paris.
August 21, 1998
Paris
At the Alliance Française yesterday afternoon, I took a placement exam: twenty-five multiplechoice
questions and a short essay in which I had to describe a party. Without the class I took in New
York I’d have been lost, but between that and all the strange vocabulary words I’ve memorized over
the past few years, I think I did OK. “The party was held at the home of my Uncle Robert who lives