By Daniel Wirtheim, Features Editor

Published in print Oct.29, 2014

My admiration for David Sedaris must have started two years ago, when I was a sophomore and looked over my laptop at Tate Street Coffee to see a girl reading a book titled “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.” My grandma has diabetes, and I liked the title. So that night I checked the book out from the Library.

I couldn’t put it down. Essentially, it’s a book of essays, short astute and hilarious little parables about life and being a small cranky little man in a world of jerks and uninteresting people.

Reading a book like “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls,” or any of Sedaris’ other works, is sort of like sitting next to an over-caffeinated complainer on a long train ride.

His essays are stories of regular people, fictional people, long irate emails and dream segments. It’s one of the stronger points of his writing, that he never focused on one subject long enough to become boring. 

Being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder at a young age, I can’t focus on one thing for too long so my attraction to Sedaris was natural.

I read his earlier publications, listened to all of his NPR segments and contributions to This American Life. The radio segments were the most alarming to me. I had never really considered what Sedaris’ voice would sound like, but it never crossed my mind that it would sound like the childish, high-pitched noise I was hearing on the radio. But in some way, that added to the Sedaris ethos. The joke was on him, and made his work even more hilarious.

When I heard Sedaris was coming to The Carolina Theatre, I had to go. When I saw that there was only one ticket left on the front row, I had to buy it regardless of the fact that I would

be going alone, at least in theory. It would be a sold out show. I figured that at events like these there should be some sense of solidarity within the crowd. After all, we were all there for the same reasons.

Come Friday night, the night of An Evening With David Sedaris, I had to be the only one born in the 90’s in the theatre. It made me self-conscious. Was I ahead of my time, out of touch with my own generation? Was I living my life too fast, simply careening towards death without examining what was going on around me, or not living “in the moment?” Would I soon get a cat and subscribe to the New Yorker?

The tickets advertised that there would be a Q & A segment and book signing after the performance, where audience members could ask Sedaris anything. I thought, maybe this is my time to shine. Maybe my question would so intrigue Sedaris that he would see something of himself in me and ask me to join him on tour.

We would travel and write together. No one would understand the kind of relationship we shared. Of course, they would speculate. There would be all sorts of accusations and awkward statements from the press, maybe even magazine covers. But only Sedaris and myself would understand the special kind of relationship that we shared.

Then the lights turned on us. I was in the front row, practically looking up the skirt that he wore. I had decided that I would ask him about his editing process. I knew it wasn’t the best, but I wanted to ask something and didn’t want to sound uneducated or anything.

Luckily, he didn’t pick me, mostly because I choked and barely raised my hand at all. I figured I would let the others ask their questions, let him make fun of them. He probably thought I was scratching my head.

But the show was great. Sedaris has a way of bringing out the thoughts that everyone doesn’t even know that they had thought. Sedaris even talked about that.  The entire night I was enamored as he read from his journal, unpublished essays and just talked about life.