Empoword

Part Two: Text Wrestling 210 On the day that Miss Chestnut makes her appearance in the Sedaris household to discuss his behaviors with his mother, Sedaris watches them from the staircase, helplessly embarrassed. We can infer from this scene that Sedaris has actually become aware of that fact that his tics are not considered to be socially acceptable, and that he must be “the weird kid” among his peers—and even to his parents and teachers. His mother’s cavalier derision demonstrates her apparent disinterest in the well-being of he son, as she blatantly brushes off his strange behaviors except in the instance during which she can put them on display for the purpose of entertaining a crowd. What all of these pieces of his mother’s flawed personality show us is that she has issues too— drinking and smoking, in addition to her poor mothering—but yet Sedaris is the one being chastised while she lives a normal life. Later in the essay, Sedaris describes how “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic” (366), drawing a parallel to his mother’s drinking and smoking. From this comparison, we can begin to see flawed standards of “normal behavior”: although many people drink and smoke (especially at the time the story takes place), these habits are much more harmful than what Sedaris does in private. Sedaris’ father has an equally harmful personality, but it manifests differently. Sedaris describes him as a hoarder, one who has, “saved it all: every last Green Stamp and coupon, every outgrown bathing suit and scrap of linoleum” (365). Sedaris’ father attempts to “cure [Sedaris] with a series of threats” (366). In one scene, he even enacts violence upon David by slamming on the brakes of the car while David has his nose pressed against a windshield. Sedaris reminds us that his behavior might have been unusual, but it wasn’t violent: “So what if I wanted to touch my nose to the windshield? Who was I hurting?” (366). In fact, it is in that very scene that Sedaris draws the aforementioned parallel to his mother’s drinking: when Sedaris discovers that “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic,” it is while his father is driving around “with a lapful of rejected, out-of-state coupons” (366). Not only is Sedaris’ father violating the trust David places in him as a caregiver; his hoarding is an arguably unhealthy habit that simply happens to be more socially acceptable than licking a concrete toadstool. Comparing Sedaris’s tics to his father’s issues, it is apparent that his father’s are much more harmful than his own. None of the adults in Sedaris’ life are innocent—“mother