Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris Read Free Book Online Page A

average citizen had ceased to care about.
Early in our junior year, Thad was jumped by a group of the new black kids, who yanked off his shoes and threw them in the toilet. I knew I was supposed to be happy, but part of me felt personally assaulted. True, he’d been a negligent prince, yet still I believed in the monarchy. When his name was called at graduation, it was I who clapped the longest, outlasting even his parents, who politely stopped once he’d left the stage.
I thought about Thad a lot over the coming years, wondering where he went to college and if he joined a fraternity. The era of the Big Man on Campus had ended, but the rowdy houses with their pool tables and fake moms continued to serve as reunion points for the once popular, who were now viewed as date rapists and budding alcoholics. I tell myself that while his brothers drifted toward a confused and bitter adulthood, Thad stumbled into the class that changed his life. He’s the poet laureate of Liechtenstein, the surgeon who cures cancer with love, the ninth-grade teacher who insists that the world is big enough for everyone. When moving to another city, I’m always hoping to find him living in the apartment next door. We’ll meet in the hallway and he’ll stick out his hand, saying, “Excuse me, but don’t I — shouldn’t I know you?” It doesn’t have to happen today, but it does have to happen. I’ve kept a space waiting for him, and if he doesn’t show up, I’m going to have to forgive my father.
The root canal that was supposed to last for ten years has now lasted for over thirty, though it’s nothing to be proud of. Having progressively dulled and weakened, the tooth is now a brownish gray color the Conran’s catalog refers to as “Kabuki.” It’s hanging in there, but just barely. While Dr. Povlitch worked out of a converted brick house beside the Colony Shopping Center, my current dentist, Docteur Guig, has an office near the Madeleine, in Paris. On a recent visit, he gripped my dead tooth between his fingertips and gently jiggled it back and forth. I hate to unnecessarily exhaust his patience, so when he asked me what had happened, it took me a moment to think of the clearest possible answer. The past was far too complicated to put into French, so instead I envisioned a perfect future, and attributed the root canal to a little misunderstanding between friends.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Monie Changes Everything
M Y MOTHER HAD A GREAT-AUNT who lived outside of Cleveland and visited us once in Binghamton, New York. I was six years old but can clearly remember her car moving up the newly paved driveway. It was a silver Cadillac driven by a man in a flattopped cap, the kind worn by policemen. He opened the back door with great ceremony, as if this were a coach, and we caught sight of the great-aunt’s shoes, which were orthopedic yet fancy, elaborately tooled leather with little heels the size of spools. The shoes were followed by the hem of a mink coat, the tip of a cane, and then, finally the great-aunt herself, who was great because she was rich and childless.
“Oh, Aunt Mildred,” my mother said, and we looked at her strangely. In private she referred to her as “Aunt Monie.” a cross between moaning and money, and the proper name was new to us.
“Sharon!” Aunt Monie said. She looked at our father, and then at us.
“This is my husband, Lou,” my mother said. “And these are our children.”
“How nice. Your children.”
The driver handed my father several shopping bags and then returned to the car as the rest of us stepped inside.
“Would he like to use the bathroom or something?” my mother whispered. “I mean, he’s more than welcome to. . . .”
Aunt Monie laughed, as if my mother had asked if the car itself would like to come indoors. “Oh, no, dear. He’ll stay outside.”
I don’t believe my father gave her a tour, the way he did with most visitors. He had designed parts of the house