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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
If asked by a student why it’s important to learn something, Sedaris figures that a teacher can always say that the knowledge will inevitably come in handy when the student grows up and starts doing crossword puzzles. Sedaris himself was never all that interested in crossword puzzles until he decided to say hello to a former boyfriend one day. Although they broke up, he and this man are still friends. The ex-boyfriend was and still is extremely handsome, and it is because of this that Sedaris has always assumed he must be stupid. Otherwise, he thinks, it would be “simply unfair” for him to be both attractive and intelligent. When he swung by his ex-boyfriend’s office one day, though, he was horrified to see his former lover using a pen to complete the Friday crossword puzzle in The New York Times while speaking on the phone.
That Sedaris is mortified to see his attractive ex-boyfriend competently completing a crossword puzzle without seeming to exert much effort perfectly aligns with his characteristic feelings of insecurity. Time and again, he demonstrates his fear of inadequacy, and this is the exact kind of situation that excites this fear. According to Sedaris’s worldview, it’s excessive for somebody as attractive as his ex-boyfriend to also possess a fierce intelligence, especially since this makes Sedaris feel particularly bad about himself—a sign that he fears not only the possibility that he’s unintelligent, but also unattractive.
Themes
Sedaris is horrified to find his ex-boyfriend successfully finishing Friday’s New York Times crossword puzzle because he knows that the puzzles get progressively harder throughout the week. Worse, his boyfriend says that doing the puzzle is just something he likes to “do with [his] hands” while he’s on the phone. From that point on, Sedaris dedicates himself to getting better at crossword puzzles, but it takes him two years to get to the level where he can finish a Thursday puzzle—and even that takes him seven hours.
Seeing his ex-boyfriend complete the Friday crossword puzzle inspires Sedaris to improve on his own crossword skills. It’s worth noting that this inspiration comes from a place of jealousy. This suggests that Sedaris is motivated by his own insecurity and a petty sense of jealousy, not out of a healthy sense of competition. Worse, though, is that he discovers he truly isn’t as intelligent as his attractive ex-boyfriend, no matter how hard he tries. In this way, his inability to let this matter go only forces him to confirm the validity of his worst fear.
Themes
Sedaris starts reading reference books and comes across a list of phobias, including one pertaining to people who fear being tied, beaten, locked up, and “smeared with human waste.” It strikes Sedaris as odd that this would be labeled a phobia, since this fear is rational. After all, who wants to be “handcuffed and covered in human feces”? As soon as Sedaris asks himself this question, though, he immediately thinks of three friends who might enjoy this. Consequently, he looks up if there’s a phobia for people who are afraid they might know too many masochists, but he finds nothing. He also looks up if there’s a name for people who fear that “their self-worth is based entirely on the completion of a daily crossword puzzle.” If this word were an answer on a puzzle, he thinks, the clue would probably be, “You, honestly.”
In this moment, Sedaris reveals that he’s perfectly aware of the fact that he often lets his insecurities overtake him. Indeed, he recognizes that he bases his “self-worth” on arbitrary things like crossword puzzles. In characteristic form, though, Sedaris’s self-awareness doesn’t alter his behavior. In other words, he’s perfectly cognizant of the fact that he shouldn’t let things like crossword puzzles have so much influence over the way he conceives of himself, but he doesn’t do anything to avoid this kind of thinking. Instead, he thinks incessantly about the implications of his crossword puzzle abilities while providing humorous, self-effacing commentary about his pursuit to prove his own intelligence.
Themes
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