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Lou Sedaris (Sedaris’s Father)
Miss Samson is a speech therapist who works with Sedaris to eliminate his lisp. When Sedaris is in the fifth grade, Miss Samson takes him out of class to help him properly pronounce words containing the letter s. A strict young teacher, she carefully enunciates when she speaks and implores him to do the same, suggesting that his lisp is nothing but a sign of laziness. Sedaris hates working with Miss Samson, especially because he feels as if she has destroyed his efforts to hide his sexual identity as a young gay person trying to fit into the heteronormative environment of North Carolina in the 1960s. Thankfully for him, Miss Samson only stays at his school for a semester before going elsewhere. In their last session, she tells him that she feels like a failure and opens up about how hard it is that her fiancé is fighting in the Vietnam War. However, her tenderness is an act, one intended to trick Sedaris into using an s, since he has taken to avoiding such words. “I’m thorry,” he says, and she immediately looks up and laughs, telling him he has a lot of work ahead of him.
Miss Samson Quotes in Me Talk Pretty One Day
The Me Talk Pretty One Day quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Samson or refer to Miss Samson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Go Carolina
Quotes
No one else had been called, so why me? I ran down a list of recent crimes, looking for a conviction that might stick. Setting fire to a reportedly flameproof Halloween costume, stealing a set of barbecue tongs from an unguarded patio, altering the word hit on a list of rules posted on the gymnasium door; never did it occur to me that I might be innocent.
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The question of team preference was common in our part of North Carolina, and the answer supposedly spoke volumes about the kind of person you either were or hoped to become. I had no interest in football or basketball but had learned it was best to pretend otherwise. If a boy didn't care for barbecued chicken or potato chips, people would accept it as a matter of personal taste, saying, “Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds.” You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn't like sports. When the subject came up, I found it best to ask which team my questioner preferred. Then I’d say, “Really? Me, too!”
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“One of these days I'm going to have to hang a sign on that door,” Agent Samson used to say. She was probably thinking along the lines of SPEECH THERAPY LAB, though a more appropriate marker would have read FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA. We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but were ultimately betrayed by our tongues. At the beginning of the school year, while we were congratulating ourselves on successfully passing for normal, Agent Samson was taking names as our assembled teachers raised their hands, saying, “I've got one in my homeroom,” and “There are two in my fourth-period math class.” Were they also able to spot the future drunks and depressives?
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Miss Samson Quotes in Me Talk Pretty One Day
The Me Talk Pretty One Day quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Samson or refer to Miss Samson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Go Carolina
Quotes
No one else had been called, so why me? I ran down a list of recent crimes, looking for a conviction that might stick. Setting fire to a reportedly flameproof Halloween costume, stealing a set of barbecue tongs from an unguarded patio, altering the word hit on a list of rules posted on the gymnasium door; never did it occur to me that I might be innocent.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The question of team preference was common in our part of North Carolina, and the answer supposedly spoke volumes about the kind of person you either were or hoped to become. I had no interest in football or basketball but had learned it was best to pretend otherwise. If a boy didn't care for barbecued chicken or potato chips, people would accept it as a matter of personal taste, saying, “Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds.” You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn't like sports. When the subject came up, I found it best to ask which team my questioner preferred. Then I’d say, “Really? Me, too!”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“One of these days I'm going to have to hang a sign on that door,” Agent Samson used to say. She was probably thinking along the lines of SPEECH THERAPY LAB, though a more appropriate marker would have read FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA. We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but were ultimately betrayed by our tongues. At the beginning of the school year, while we were congratulating ourselves on successfully passing for normal, Agent Samson was taking names as our assembled teachers raised their hands, saying, “I've got one in my homeroom,” and “There are two in my fourth-period math class.” Were they also able to spot the future drunks and depressives?
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