Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls - By David Sedaris Page 0,9
got to be too much, when our parents could no longer take it, they’d open the car door and throw us out. The spot they favored—had actually blackened with their tire treads—was at the bottom of a steep hill. The distance home wasn’t all that great, a half mile, maybe, but it seemed twice as long when it was hot or raining, or, worse yet, during a thunderstorm. “Aw, it’s just heat lightning,” our father would say. “That’s not going to kill anybody. Now get the hell out of my car.”
Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I’d remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I’d wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much.
Drawing attention to Gretchen’s weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as “stirring the turd,” and I did it a lot that summer. Dad wants Greg Sakas to be his son instead of me, I thought, and in response I made myself the kind of kid that nobody could like.
“What on earth has gotten into you?” my mother kept asking.
I wanted to tell her, but more than that I wanted her to notice it on her own. How can you not? I kept wondering. It’s all he ever talks about.
The next swim meet was a replay of the first two. Coming home, I was once again in the “way back”—anything to put some distance between me and my father. “I’ll tell you what—that Greg is magic. Success is written all over his face, and when it happens I’m going to say, ‘Hey, buddy, remember me? I’m the one who first realized how special you are.’”
He talked as if he actually knew stuff about swimming, like he was a talent scout for Poseidon or something. “The butterfly’s his strong suit, but let’s not discount his crawl or, hell, even his breaststroke, for that matter. Seeing that kid in the water is like seeing a shark!”
His talk was supposedly directed at my mother, who’d stare out the window and sometimes sigh, “Oh gosh, Lou. I don’t know.” She never said anything to keep the conversation going, so I could only believe that he was saying these things for my benefit. Why else would he be speaking so loudly, and catching my eye in the rearview mirror?
One week, while riding home, I took my sister Amy’s Barbie doll, tied her feet to the end of my beach towel, and lowered her out the way-back window, dragging her behind us as we drove along. Every so often I’d reel her back in and look at the damage—the way the asphalt had worn the hair off one side of her head, whittled her ski-jump nose down to nothing. What, I wondered, was Greg up to at that exact moment? Did his father like him as much as mine did? He was an only child, so chances were he got the star treatment at home as well as at the club. I lowered the doll back out the window and let go of the towel. The car behind us honked, and I ducked down low and gave the driver the finger.
By mid-July, I was begging to quit the team, but my parents wouldn’t allow it. “Oh, you’re a good swimmer,” my mother said. “Not the best, maybe, but so what? Who wants to be the best at something you do in a bathing suit?”
In the winter, my Greek grandmother was hit by a truck and moved from New York State to live with us. Bringing her to the club would have depressed people. The mournful black dresses, the long gray hair pinned into an Old Country bun, she was the human equivalent of a storm cloud. I thought she’d put a crimp in our upcoming pool schedule, but when Memorial Day arrived, it was business as usual. “She’s a big girl,” my mother said. “Let her stay home by herself.”
“Well, shouldn’t we be back by five, just in case she falls down the stairs or something?” I didn’t want her to ruin my summer—just to keep me off the swim team. “I could come home and sit with her.”
“The hell you will,” my mother said. “A nice steep fall is just what I’m hoping for.”
I thought the birth of my brother, Paul, might limit our pool hours as well, but, again, no luck. It can’t have been healthy for a six-month-old in that