David Sedaris

"My mother set the picnic table with insect-repelling candles, and just as she started to eat she caught me chewing a hunk of beef the size of a coin purse. Gorging always set her off, but on this occasion it bothered her more than usual. "I hope you choke to death," she said. I was twelve years old, and paused thinking, Did I hear her correctly? "That's right, piggy, suffocate" "
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

I love the vignette that Sedaris creates in this passage and especially how he plays around in the cultural arena. There is no way in heck anyone’s mom would ever say that in adherence to cultural norms/roles and Sedaris' mom shockingly deviates from them by telling the 12 year old Sedaris to "choke to death", which creates humor. In this blog post I am going to try to achieve the same effect by writing about people who have unreasonable and rude reactions to things, playing around in the cultural arena and using a deadpan tone in the low style much in the same way Sedaris does to achieve humor.

I was sitting in a lecture hall in Tydings taking my microeconomics exam and Clark, one of my best friends, was sitting in the desk next to me. I had a cold at the time so every few minutes or so I'd cough a bit, nothing too distracting or disconcerting. Well about half way through the exam I had a small fit of coughing, and there was something about this one and not the others that just set Clark off.

"I hope you cough out a lung," he said.

I had to do a double take because I could believe he said that.

"That's right, wheezy, cough it out."

That reminded me of one time when I was visiting my grandpa in the extended stay ward of Sibley Hospital. Next to his room was an elderly woman whose daughter brought her granddaughter to see every few days. One day I overheard the granddaughter, who couldn't be older than eight, talking to the elderly woman.

"Why can't you just die already? Mommy told me it would happen soon but it’s already been a month since then and every time we come out here I have to miss watching Hannah Montana"

Good God, I thought to myself, What the heck has this world come to?

I know what its come to. In my art class on last Monday, my art teacher assigned us our final. We have to do forty-five compositions all of either frogs, manhole covers, dandelions, apples, or ants. She said she was going to give us fifty but decided to give us a break and only assign forty-five, and to repay her we had to do them all by the Monday after Thanksgiving. She asked the class how we felt about the assignment after she explained it.

"Mrs. Jacobs, hold on a second while I go ram my head into a wall," said a student responded.

He stood up and proceeded to ram his head into the wall.