Answer Happy

Essay
197x cord-bration 1648527800000 Share * O A Plague of Tics Born in 1956 in Johorson City, New York, David Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina He is a playwright in collaboration with his sister Arty) and an essayist whose work has been featured regularly on National Public Radio and in collection such as Me Tok Pretty One Day (2000). Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004) and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008). Sedaris work tends toward the satiric, bude the most wickedly pointed of his prices are marked by an iron stance that includes the cathorum those lumns whose folly must be satired. This me on nii satirice on him is evident in A Mague of The taken from Naked (1997), in which he co-wit mor and death obsessive-compusi cuviors that affected him from elementary school through colle When the teacher asked if she night visit with my mother, touched my nose sight times to the surface of my desk "May take that as a 'yes she asked. According to her calculations, I had left my chair twenty-eight times that day. "You're up and downlike a flea. I tummy back for two minutes and there you are with your tongue pressed as that light switch. Maybe they do that where you come from, but here in my classroom we don't leave our seats and lick things 5:24 LL O * CD 8 9
197X-actoard Caption 1646302000000 scoad Signature When the teacher asked if she might visit with my mother touched my nose eight times to the surface of my desk. "May I take that as a 'yes' she asked. According to her calculations, I had left my chair twenty-eight times that day. "You're up and down like a flea I turn my back for two minutes and there you are with your tongue pressed against that light switch. Maybe they do that where you come from, but here in my classroom we don't leave our seats and lick things whenever we please. That is Miss Chestnut's light switch, and she likes to keep it dry. Would you like me to come over to your house and put my tongue on your light switches? Well, would you?" I tried to picture her in action, but my shoe was calling. Take me off. it whispered. Tap my heel agairut your forehead three times Do it now quick, no one will notice "Well?" Miss Chestnut raised her faint, penciled eyebrows. Tm asking you a question. Would you or would you not want me lick ing the light switches in your house? 359 BBB 124 G LL O 0
3560 e Home produtos coton.com/ 1356518 360 I slipped off my shot pretending to examine the imprint on the beel "You're going to hit yourself over the bead with that shoe, an': you? It wasn't hitting it was tapping but still, how had she known what I was about to do? "Heel martes all over your forehead," she said, answering my stlest question "You should take a look in the mirror sometime Shoes are dirty things. We wear them on our feet to protect ourselves against the soil . It's not healthy to hit ourselves over the head with shoes is it?" pessed that it was not "Guess? This is not a game to be used. I don't that its dangerous to run into traffic with a paper sack over my head There's no guess work involved. These things are facts, sot riddles She sat at her desk, continuing her lecture as she penned bele letter Td like to have a word with your mother. You do have one don't you? I'm asuming you weren't raised by animals she blind your mother? Can she see the way you behave, or do you reserve your antica exclusively for Miss Chestnut She banded me the folded slip of paper. "You may so now and on your way cut the door I'm askine you please not to bathe my light switch DELL 1 1 → c с 널 < #m $ 4 % 5 use 2 3 6
Moto X 13565 keam.com prodevython codent blackboard com 133/2/135658197 5619 . out the door I'm asiding you please not to bathe my light switch with your germ-ridden tongue. Te's had a long day, we both have. It was a short distance from the school to our rented house, no more than six hundred and thirty-seven steps, and on a good day I could make the trip in an hour, pausing every few feet to tongue a mallbox or touch whichever single leaf or blade of grass demanded my attention. If I were to lose count of may steps, rd have to return to the school and begin again. "Back so soon?" the Janitor would ask. "You just can't get enough of this place, can you?" He had it all wrong. I wanted to be at home more than any thing, it was getting there that was the problem. I might touch the telephone pole at step three hundred and fourteen and then, fifteen paces later, worry that I hadn't touched it in exactly the right spot. It needed to be touched again. I'd let my mind wander for one brief moment and then doubt had set in causing me to question not just the telephone pola but also the lawni onament back at step two hundred and nineteen I'd have to go back and DOLL
xboardprto 164872000000 boord lick that concrete mushroom one more time, hoping its dins wouldn't once again rush from her house shouting. Get your face out of my toadstooll" It might be raining or maybe I had to go to the bathroom, but running home was not an option. This was a long and complicated process that demanded an oppressive atten tion to detail. It wasn't that I enjoyed pressing my nose against the scalding hood of a parked car-pleasure had nothing to do with it. A person had to do these things because nothing was worse than the angulsh of not doing them. Bypass that mailbox and my brain would never for one moment let me forget it. I might be sitting at the dinner table, daring myself not to think about it, and the thought would revisit my mind. Dort think about it. But it would already be too late and I knew then exactly what I had to do. Excusing myself to go to the bathroom. Td walk out the front door and return to that mailbot, not just touching but jabbing, practically pounding on the thing because I thought I hated it so much. What I really hated, of course, was my mind There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it I didn't remember things being this way back north. Our family had been transferred from Endicott, New York, to Raleigh, North Carolina. That was the word used by the people at Mrr ferred. A new home was under construction, but until it was fin ished we were confined to a rental property built to resemblea plantation house. The buildings in a treeless, baldine yard, its white columns promising a majesty the interior faded to deliver The front door opened onto a dark narrow hallway lined with L o O OD 9
x blackboard Expiration=164122000000X board Sure Nos promise to interior utove The front door opened onto a dark, narrow hallway lined with bedrooms not much larger than the mattresses that furnished them. Our kitchen was located on the second floor, alongside the living room, Its picture window offering a view of the cinder block wall built to hold back the tide of mud generated by the neighbor- ing dirt mound. "Our own little corner of hell," my mother said, fanning herself with one of the shingles littering the front yard Depressing as it was arriving at the front stoop of the house meant that I had completed the first leg of that bitter tasting jour ney to my bedroom. Once home I would touch the front door seven times with each elbow, a task made more difficult if there was someone else around. "Why don't you try the knob, my sis ter Lisa would say, "That's what the rest of us do, and it seems to A FLAG Oncs 363 "And I suppose this Miss..My mother unfolded the letter BE
astro-ente.com Google 13565819 362 DVD BRIS 38.2 be work for. Inside the house there were switches and doerstops to be acknowledged. My bedroom was right there off the hallax but first had business to tend to her sing the fourth eighth and twelfth carpeted stair, I wiped the chair oy lips and proceeded to the kitchen, where I was commanded to stroke the burners of the stove, press my nose against the refrigerator door and arrange the percolator, toaste and blender into a straight TO After making my rounds of the living room, it was time to Kneel beside the batter and Windly Saba butter knife in the direction of my favorite electrical socket. There were bulbs to lick and bathroom facets to test before finally I was free to enter my bedroom, where I would carefully align the objects on my dresser lick the corners of my metal desk and linypon my bed rocking back and forth and thinking of what an odd woman she way third-grade teacher, Miss Chestnut Why come here and lick my switches when she never used the one she had? Maybe she was drunk Her note had asked if she might visit our home in order to di cuss what she referred to as my special problems "Have you been leaving your seat to lick the light with my mother asked. She placed the latter upon the table and its cigarette "Once or twice." Isaid. "Once or twice what? Every half hour very ten minutes "I don't know, I lied. Who counting w tor hig int so SO to To OT 日日 rel DELL → с a A @ 2 #m $ 4 % 5 & 7 6
"A 1156519 learn uscat rod foxythai.content backboard.com/61ab1331012/13565197 5819 "Once or twice," I said, "Once or twice what? Every half hour? Every ten minutes?" "I don't know." I lied. "Who's counting?" "Well, your goddamned math teacher, for one. That's her job. to count. What do you think she's not going to notice? "Notice what?" It never failed to amaze me that people might notice these things. Because my actions were so Intensely private, 1 had always assumed they were somehow invisible. When con nered, I demanded that the witness had been mistaken. "What do you mean, 'notice what?" I got a phone call just this afternoon from that lady up the street, that Mrs. Keening, the one with the twins. She says she caught you in her front yard, down on your hands and knees kissing the evening edition of her newspaper" "I wasn't kissing it. I was just trying to read the headline" "And you had to get that close? Maybe we need to get you some stronger ginsses. "Well, maybe we do." I said DELL с 311
ALADOGS 45 "And I suppose this in... My mother unfolded the letter and studied the signature. This Miss Chestnut is mistaken, too? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Maybe she has you confused with the other boy who loves his set to like the pencil shape or touch the flag or whatever the bell it is you do the moment her back is tumed? "That's very lily." I said, "She's old. There are spots on her bands." "How many?" my mother asked. On the afternoon that Miss Chestnut arrived for her visit was in my bedroom, rocking. Unlike the obsessive counting and touching rocking was not a mandatory duty but a voluntary and highly pleasurable exercise. It was my hobby, and there was not ing else I would rather do. The point was not to rock oneself to sleep: This was not a step toward some greater rol. It was the goal itself. The perpetual movement freed my mind, allowing me to mill things over and construct elaborately detailed fitnes Toss in a radio, and I was content to rock until three or four o'clock in the morning, listening to the hitparade and discovering that each and everyone was about me. I might have to listen two or three hundred times to the same song, but sooner or later its private message would reveal tell Because it was pleasant and relaxing my rocking was bound to be tripped up, most often by ELL * 00 8 9 2
Backboard Emiration 1641577000X blackboard Signature + pen reading my rocking was bound to be tripped up, most often by my brain, which refused to allow me more than ten consecutive minutes of happiness. At the opening chords of my current favor Ite sont, a voice would whisper, Shouldn't you be upstairs making sure there are really one hundred and fourteen peppercorn left in that small ceramic jar? And, hex while you ep there, you might want to check the front and make sure it's not setting for to the baby bedroom. The list of demands would grow by the moment. What about that television are? Is it still ser into that perfect, or has one of your sisters destroyed its integrity. You know, I was jus! wonder how rightly the lid screwed onto that mayonnaise jar. Let's have a look, shall we? I would be just on the edge of truly enjoying myself, this close to breaking the song's complex code, when my thoughts would get in the way. The trick was to bide my time until the record was no longer my favorite, to wait until it had slipped from its number one position on the charts and fool my mind into beldes ing I no longer cared 20 $26 o
нс barn spred the concert 13565819 364 I was coming to terms with The Shadow of Your Smile when Miss Chestnut arrived. She rang the bell, and I cracked open my bedroom door watching as my mother invited her in "You'll have to forgive me for these boxes. My mother licked her cigarette out the door and into the littered yard. "They're Sided with crap, every last one of them, but God forbid we throw any thing away Oh no, we can't do that! My husband's saved it every last Green Stamp and coupon, every outgrown bathing suit and scrap of linoleum, it's all right here along with the rocks and knotted sticks he was look just like his old department head or associate district manager or some goddamned thing. She mopped at her forebead with a wadded paper towel. "Anyway, to hell with it. You look like I need a drink ech all right?" Miss Chestnut's eyes brightened. I really shouldn't but, oh why not?" She followed my mother up the stairs. "Just a drop with ice, no water I tried rocking in bed, but the sound of laughter drew me to the top of the landing, where from my vantage point behind an oversized wardrobe box. I watched the two women discussy behavior "Oh, you mean the touching my mother said. She studied the ashtray that sat before her on the table, narrowing her eyes touch like a cat catching sight of a squirrel. Her look of fixed concen tration suggested that nothing else mattered. Time had stopped, and she was deaf to the sounds of the rating for and my sisters DELL с @ 非 # $
11 Som us cost-prod Bythos content blackboard V1330358519 why not?" She followed my mother up the stairs. "Just a drop with ice, no water" I tried rocking in bed, but the sound of laughter drew me to the top of the landing, where from my vantage point behind an oversized wardrobe box, I watched the two women discuss my behavior "Oh, you mean the touching." my mother said. She studied the ashtray that sat before her on the table, marrowing her eyes much like a cat catching sight of a squirrel. Her look of fixed concen tration suggested that nothing else mattered. Time had stopped, and she was deaf to the sounds of the rattling fan and my sisters squabbling out in the driveway she opened her mouth just slightly running her tongue over her upper lip, and then she inched forward, her index finger prodding the ashtray as though it were a sleeping thing she was trying to wake. I had never seen myself in action, but a sharp, stinging sense of recognition told me that my mother's impersonation had been accurate, "Priceless!" Miss Chestnut laughed, clasping her hands in delight. "Oh, that's very good, you ve captured him perfectly Bravo, I give you an Aplus. "God only knows where he gets it from." my mother said. "He's a probably down in his room right this minute, counting his eye lashes or gnawing at the pulls on his dresser One, two o'clock in the morning and he'll still be at it, rattling around the house to poke the laundry hamper or press his face against the refrigerator DOLL с #
1x nadboard Expirations laboratore door. The kid's wound too tight, but he'll come out of it. So, what do you say, another scotch. Katherine?" Now she was Katherine. Another few drinks and she'd prob ably be joining us for our summer vacation. How casy it was for adults to bond over a second round of cocktails. I returned to my bed, cranlding up the radio so as not to be distracted by the sound of their cackling. Because Miss Chestnut was here in my home, knew it was only a matter of time before the voices would order me to enter the kitchen and make a spectacle of myself. Maybe I'd have to suck on the broom handle or stand on the table to touch the overhead light fixture, but whatever was demanded of me, had no choice but to do it. The song that played on the radio posed no challenge whatsoever, the lyric as clear as if I'd written it myself. "Well, I think I'm going out of my head," the man ang "yes. I think I'm going out of my head." Following Miss Chestnut's visit, my father attempted to cure me with a series of threats. "You touch your nose to that wind shield one more time and I'll guarantee you'll wish you hadnt, he said driving home from the grocery store with a laptal of rejected, out-of-state coupons. It was virtually impossible for me to ride in the passenger seat of a car and not press my nose apainst the windshield, and now that the activity had been forbidden. I wanted it more than anything I tried closing my eyes, hoping that might eliminate my desire, but found myself thinking that per haps he was the one who should close his eyes. So what if I wanted to touch my nose to the windshield? Who was it hurting? Why was it that he could repeatedly worry his change and bite his 0 LL o 数 8 9 0
lackboard Expiration 164852200000X blackboard-signature * C haps he was the one who should close his eyes. So what if I wanted to touch my nose to the windshield? Who was it hurting? Why was it that he could repeatedly worry his change and bite his lower lip without the threat of punishment? My mother smoked and Miss Chestnut massaged her waist twenty, thirty times a day - and here I couldn't press my nose against the windshield of a car? I opened my eyes, defiant, but when he caught me mov- ing toward my target, my father slammed on the brakes. "You like that, did you?" He handed me a golf towel to wipe the blood from my nose. "Did you like the feel of that?" Like was too feeble for what I felt. I loved it. If mashed with the right amount of force, a blow to the nose can be positively nar cotic. Touching objects satisfied a mentalitch, but the task involved a great deal of movement: run upstairs, cross the room, remove a shoe, I soon found those same urges could be fulfilled within the A PLACE OF TEC 367 00