Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
Like a television show in which cops come to a perpetrator’s house, knock on his door, and tell him to come with them, David Sedaris is sitting in his fifth grade class when a woman enters and asks to see him. Instantly, he thinks about all the things he’s done wrong recently: he lit a supposedly flame-resistant Halloween costume on fire, stole grill tongs from somebody’s unwatched porch, doctored the word hit on a poster by the school’s gym. Frantically wondering why he’s in trouble, he doesn’t even stop to think that he might be innocent.
That Sedaris immediately assumes he’s done something wrong when somebody singles him out suggests that he is the kind of person who constantly fears punishment or disapproval. Of course, this is a natural way for a kid to respond to a stranger bursting into his classroom and asking to see him, but Sedaris’s guilty conscience is tinged with both insecurity and humor—a combination that characterizes his general outlook on life throughout the essays in Me Talk Pretty One Day.
Themes
Walking down the hall, the woman who summoned Sedaris introduces herself as Miss Samson. She then asks if he roots for “State or Carolina.” Sedaris knows this is a common question in North Carolina, where everyone is obsessed with college football and loyal to their teams. Sedaris, for his part, doesn’t care about sports, but he’s learned that it makes people suspicious if he tells them that he—a boy—doesn’t like football. Accordingly, he always tries to guess which team the other person likes. Looking at Miss Samson’s red sweater, he interprets it as an indication that she roots for State, so he says, “Definitely State. State all the way.” Hearing this, Miss Samson slyly asks him to repeat himself because she is, as Sedaris later finds out, a speech therapist sent to work with him on eliminating his lisp when saying the letter s.
Sedaris feels as if his lack of interest in sports sets him apart from everyone else in his community. Given that many of the essays in Me Talk Pretty One Day examine—albeit in offhanded ways—traditional conceptions of masculinity, it’s important to note that Sedaris doesn’t conform to what everyone seems to see as the typical manifestation of boyhood. In other words, his lack of interest in football has larger implications, suggesting his sense of alienation and his divergence from traditional gender roles.
Themes
In her office, Miss Samson tricks Sedaris into saying a number of words that contain the letter s. Whenever she speaks, she goes out of her way to emphasize her perfect enunciation, often pointing out that Sedaris’s lisp is a sign that his tongue is lazy. Sedaris comes to dread his sessions with Miss Samson, especially because the other boys who have to see her are unpopular, though he can’t help but acknowledge that they are similar to him. “You don’t want to be doing that,” these boys’ fathers often tell them. “That’s a girl thing.” These boys—including Sedaris—are always forced to hide their true interests because they aren’t considered manly enough. In retrospect, Sedaris notes that there should have been a sign on Miss Samson’s door that read: “FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA.” He also wonders if his teachers could identify the future alcoholics and “depressives.”
Again, Sedaris’s sense of alienation from the heteronormative world of North Carolina in the 1960s becomes apparent. In this case, he feels uncomfortable about the fact that he is associated with a group of boys who don’t conform to stereotypical gender roles. Consciously or not, it seems, Miss Samson and the other teachers have singled out young boys who are interested in things typically considered feminine, and though a lisp obviously can’t reveal a person’s sexual orientation, Sedaris’s teachers have nonetheless called attention to the fact that these boys aren’t like their more masculine peers—something that undoubtedly makes it harder for Sedaris to attain a sense of belonging in his school.
Themes
Newly self-conscious about his lisp, Sedaris starts avoiding s-words at all costs. To do this, he uses elaborate and longwinded alternative phrases, finding synonyms in a thesaurus he convinces his mother to buy him (through what she refers to as “endless pestering” and he refers to as “repeated badgering”). This does not entertain Miss Samson, who tries hard to trick Sedaris into using words that contain the letter s. Still, it’s no use, and his lisp doesn’t improve—nor, for that matter, do any of Miss Samson’s other students improve at their enunciation. Finally, just before Christmas break, Sedaris has his final meeting with Miss Samson, who is about to move to a new school. Letting down her guard, she tells him that they’ll spend their last session having a casual conversation, but he still refuses to use s-words.
Sedaris’s inventive ways of avoiding s-words is a perfect representation of how he deals with adversity. Instead of going along with Miss Samson’s rules, he comes up with a creative—albeit rather ridiculous—way of side-stepping his problem altogether. Needless to say, it’s quite humorous to think of a fifth-grader using long words found in the thesaurus in order to avoid using words with the letter s, and it is this kind of sly humor that runs throughout Me Talk Pretty One Day, as Sedaris uses comedy to address his own shortcomings.
Themes
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Miss Samson tells Sedaris about her holiday plans, revealing that her fiancé is at war in Vietnam. This means she’ll spend Christmas alone with her grandmother. As she continues to talk, she admits the disappointment she feels that none of her students have improved. She says she wanted to prove herself by helping them but now she feels like a failure. “My students don’t like me,” she says. As she covers her face with her hands, Sedaris says, “Hey, look, I’m thorry.” Instantly, she looks up with a smile, saying, “I got you,” and laughing at him. That night, Sedaris relays this story to his mother, who says, “You’ve got to admit that you really are a sucker.” But because he’s never banished his lisp, he prefers to use the word “chump.”
Miss Samson tricks Sedaris into using the word “sorry” by appealing to his emotions. Instead of treating him with her characteristic strictness, she opens up. In doing so, she makes it seem like they have finally made a personal connection, and though Sedaris doesn’t particularly like Miss Samson, he does appreciate the opportunity to relate to another person. In other words, Miss Samson cruelly plays on Sedaris’s desire for a sense of social acceptance. On another note, it’s worth recognizing that “Go Carolina” culminates in a joke about the fact that Sedaris has never gotten over his lisp. For all intents and purposes, this humorous final line is the most important part of the entire essay, serving as the pay-off. This formula repeats throughout Me Talk Pretty One Day, a book more interested in making humorous observations than pursuing any kind of argument or philosophical idea. Simply put, many of Sedaris’s essays work toward punchlines that conclude the narrative in a satisfying, zany way, meaning that his musings largely exist for the purpose of making the reader laugh and—in some cases—reflect on life’s many small oddities.
Themes
