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our parents in front of the TV. I was the last to 5
arrive, and took a seat on the floor beside the
sofa. The show was a Western, and even if my
head had not been throbbing, I doubt I would section two
have had the wherewithal to follow it. A posse
of outlaws crested a rocky hilltop, squinting at a /
flurry of dust advancing from the horizon, and I
thought again of the Tomkeys and of how alone
and out of place they had looked in their dopey David Sedaris
costumes. “What was up with that kid’s tail?” I
Bettmann/Getty Images asked. 35
“Shhhh,” my family said.
For months I had protected and watched

act, they had turned my pity into something
This is a photograph of children visiting the Candy over these people, but now, with one stupid
Chocolate and Confectionery Institute in New York, hard and ugly. The shift wasn’t gradual, but
at roughly the time period of this narrative. immediate, and it provoked an uncomfort-
What are some of the immediate feelings you able feeling of loss. We hadn’t been friends,
have when looking at this image? Write a few the Tomkeys and I, but still I had given them
sentences from the perspective of one of the
children before and after eating the candy. How the gift of my curiosity. Wondering about the
is what you wrote similar to or different from Tomkey family had made me feel generous,
what Sedaris writes about his candy-eating but now I would have to shift gears and find
experience? pleasure in hating them. The only alternative

was to do as my mother had instructed and
take a good look at myself. This was an old
She shook her arm, and the mound of 30 trick, designed to turn one’s hatred inward,
chocolate dropped like a horrible turd upon my and while I was determined not to fall for it, it
bedspread. “You should look at yourself,” she was hard to shake the mental picture snapped
said. “I mean, really look at yourself.” by her suggestion: here is a boy sitting on a
Along with the Necco wafers she took bed, his mouth smeared with chocolate. He’s a
several Tootsie Pops and half a dozen caramels human being, but also he’s a pig, surrounded
wrapped in cellophane. I heard her apologize by trash and gorging himself so that others
to the Tomkeys for her absence, and then may be denied. Were this the only image in
I heard my candy hitting the bottom of their the world, you’d be forced to give it your full
bags. attention, but fortunately there were others.
“What do you say?” Mrs. Tomkey asked. This stagecoach, for instance, coming round
And the children answered, “Thank you.” the bend with a cargo of gold. This shiny new
While I was in trouble for not bringing my Mustang convertible. This teenage girl, her
candy sooner, my sisters were in more trouble hair a beautiful mane, sipping Pepsi through
for not bringing theirs at all. We spent the early a straw, one picture after another, on and on
part of the evening in our rooms, then one by until the news, and whatever came on after
one we eased our way back upstairs, and joined the news.

Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample. 169
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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