Why is this little girl smiling? Is there a man sitting in the waiting room in his briefs? Photo: BotMultiChillT/Wiki
I can’t say that waiting rooms are my favourite places to be in the world. In fact, I’m not sure why the even exist. Certainly if Dante had a vision of limbo or purgatory, it was a waiting room. Most certainly, it was a hospital waiting room.
I, instead, would like to stand in a queue, like McDonald’s, then pick out my own services from a chart up high on the wall. “I’ll have a little chest pain with a side of arm numbness, please.” The teenager would then punch that into her mysterious computer till and read it back to me. “No, I don’t want pus on the side. Just the numbness. Plain.”
There would be nurses bustling about in the background looking up at computer suspended from the ceiling and rushing brown paper bags of band-aids over to the drive-thru. I would get my number and a McHospital toy to keep me busy and sit in an uncomfortable plastic chair that swivels. The swivelling is the fun part. Those McHospital toys are only tongue depressors and plastic gloves. After a few minutes of inserting them into your crevices or acting like Howie Mandel, you’re done.
But this is not what this story by David Sedaris is about. (You know, I almost wish it was).
Gist of the Story
Sedaris moves to France but drops out of French class after 6 months. It’s not taking so he quits and tries to get along by saying D’accord to everything. For those of you non-Francophones, this means “I agree,” or “Sure” or “Whatever you say.”
I’m not a Francophone either, so I’m just guessing here.
Of course, this get Sedaris in loads of trouble. He ends up being a seamstress, in pain from having his teeth scraped and on a talk show with a mouth full of stitches. See also: Sedaris ordering a pig’s nose, getting drenched in cologne and finally in for an unknown procedure at the hospital. I’m thinking the procedure may have been a vasectomy but I’m not quite sure. Neither is Sedaris. He ends up ducking out of the hospital room clad only in his briefs and sitting in an adjacent waiting room along with well-dressed men in suits and women in furs. Ah, the French! They never do say anything to the unstable.
If they did, Sedaris would answer, d’accord.
First Lines, Last Words
Six months after moving to Paris, I gave up on French school and decided to take the easy way out.
Such surprise, such amusement, as she proposes some new adventure, then stands there, waiting for your “d’accord.”
Quotable
It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me.
Book Rating
I’ll be rating When You Are Engulfed in Flames as a whole. See my book ratings chart for more information on how this works.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
