Me Talk Pretty One Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

Brian, or better yet, taken up the flute. He meant that if we’re defined by our desires, I was in for a lifetime of trouble.
    The remainder of the hour was spent awkwardly watching the clock as we silently pretended to tune our guitars.
    My father was disappointed when I told him I wouldn’t be returning for any more lessons. “He told me not to come back,” I said. “He told me I have the wrong kind of fingers.”
    Seeing that it had worked for me, my sisters invented similar stories, and together we announced that the Sedaris Trio had officially disbanded. Our father offered to find us better teachers, adding that if we were unhappy with our instruments, we could trade them in for something more suitable. “The trumpet or the saxophone, or hey, how about the vibes?” He reached for a Lionel Hampton album, saying, “I want you to sit down and give this a good listen. Just get a load of this cat and tell me he’s not an inspiration.”
    There was a time when I could listen to such a record and imagine myself as the headline act at some magnificent New York nightclub, but that’s what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top. I’d done my solo and would now move on to pursue other equally unsuccessful ways of getting attention. I’d try every art form there was, and with each disappointment I’d picture Mister Mancini holding his conch shell and saying, “For God’s sake, kid, pull yourself together.”
    We told our father, no, don’t bother playing us any more of your records, but still he persisted. “I’m telling you that this album is going to change your lives, and if it doesn’t, I’ll give each one of you a five-dollar bill. What do you think of that?”
    It was a tough call - five dollars for listening to a Lionel Hampton record. The offer was tempting, but even on the off chance he’d actually come through with the money, there would certainly be strings attached. We looked at one another, my sisters and I, and then we left the room, ignoring his cry of “Hey, where do you think you’re going? Get back in here and listen.”
    We joined our mother at the TV and never looked back. A life in music was his great passion, not ours, and our lessons had taught us that without the passion, the best one could hope for was an occasional engagement at some hippie wedding where, if we were lucky, the guests would be too stoned to realize just how bad we really were. That night, as was his habit, our father fell asleep in front of the stereo, the record making its pointless, silent rounds as he lay back against the sofa cushions, dreaming.
    Genetic Engineering
    MY FATHER ALWAYS STRUCK ME as the sort of man who, under the right circumstances, might have invented the microwave oven or the transistor radio. You wouldn’t seek him out for advice on a personal problem, but he’d be the first one you’d call when the dishwasher broke or someone flushed a hairpiece down your toilet. As children, we placed a great deal of faith in his ability but learned to steer clear while he was working. The experience of watching was ruined, time and time again, by an interminable explanation of how things were put together. Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer. Ions might charge the air, but they fell flat when it came to charging the imagination - my imagination, anyway. To this day, I prefer to believe that inside every television there lives a community of versatile, thumb-size actors trained to portray everything from a thoughtful newscaster to the wife of a millionaire stranded on a desert island. Fickle gnomes control the weather, and an air conditioner is powered by a team of squirrels, their cheeks packed with ice cubes.
    Once, while rifling through the toolshed, I came across a poster advertising an IBM computer the size of a refrigerator. Sitting at the control board was my dad the engineer, years younger, examining a