I recently reread David Sedaris’ Naked. I originally read this book when we lived in NC. It was featured as “new from a local author” at the Chapel Hill library. The descriptions of his OCD compulsions on his walk home from school—gotta lick the mailbox—made a big impression on me.
On my more recent read, I loved these passages.
On his mother and beauty routines:
I’d never understood why women bothered painting their toenails, especially my mother, whose crusty, misshapen talons resembled the shattered, nugget-sized Fritos found huddled in the bottom of the bag.
On his father:
You could outgrow your clothing waiting for my father to pick you up.
Looking at the bright side, regarding a new job:
[A]t least I’d be working alongside other people. They might not be as perceptive as I was, but still I welcomed the opportunity to speak to something born without a stem or a tail.
This is the best one! Don’t we all feel this way?
I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
An aspirational perspective on aging:
Nudism didn’t cause me to love my body, it simply allowed me to accept my position in what is clearly the scheme of things. Take a seat beside an eighty-year-old man and you can see the sagging, age-spotted body that awaits you. Rather than inciting panic, this truth seems to have a calming effect.