Claro Montemayor
Galligan/Mothersole
English IV
5.10.2014
Dress Your Family in Past and Present Corduroy and Denim
Never have I ever compared life in the past to the present; I would rather move on.
Coming into my senior year I was forced to choose and read a book over the summer. Being gay
I have only read one other book about a homosexual and loved to compare my life conflicts and
thoughts to the books. David Sedaris felt different though because instead of a romance/action
type of novel it was, but wasn’t an autobiography about him. He discusses his struggles growing
up gay and unwrapping what the world had to offer him one tape at a time. Each tape, a different
challenge and even when he, “thought things couldn’t get any worse” (Sedaris 120) it seemed as
though the piece of tape changed form to keep him from unwrapping life’s meaning.
David is around his twenties and has been kicked out of his father’s house when he
moves into an apartment and the real trouble begins. At first David meets his neighbor’s nineyear old daughter. She hangs out with him when he is home and asks a lot of questions about his
life and why he acts so strange. He eventually explains and regrets telling her that he has an
“obsessive compulsive” disorder which means he is “always on time” for whatever he has to do.
(114) Brandi “had been incorporated into [his] schedule”, and then he started, “to notice things
missing” from around the house, which he then suspected his next door neighbor was stealing
from him when he was gone on his compulsive trips. (115) He tried to tell her mother, but all she
did was tell him off and call him an “asshole”. (116)
As he listened to some relating stories on the radio he found somewhat of an answer to
his problem, it was that “children want boundaries” or so he heard. (118) He basically gave this
little girl the cold shoulder and after a few weeks he finally said hi to her while passing through
her front yard and she gave him a fake cold-hearted smile, the one you usually give to someone
Claro Montemayor
Galligan/Mothersole
English IV
5.10.2014
you secretly hate. After this he found more of his stuff trashed and tried to talk to her mother
again, but she shrugged him off and slammed the door in his face.
I understand that when someone gets the taste of power, the nine-year old, it usually takes
over, makes them mad, they get killed, and the cycle starts back over again. David does whatever
he can, but this little girl just sees him as a “little faggot, little tattletale” who then becomes
scared after multiple harassments from this little girl.(120) This little girl grew up with a terrible
mother who is a “whore” and blames all of her problems on other including her daughter. (116) I
never realized that evil people can be so little. I grew up with two nieces and a nephew and since
then cared so much for them, if anything happened to them I would be furious, but if I was in
someone else’s shoes and harassed by these three kids I wouldn’t know what to do.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim has opened me and give me false hope that
family is always there. Earlier in life around the nineteen hundreds I believe children were not
listened to as much as they are now. If this event took place back then, then the child would have
been considered a child and would not have as much power as they hold now. Because of event
that have occurred over the years such as pedophilia, sexual abuse, and even war children over
the world have been affected and in some countries more than others children are given large
amounts of power. All a child has to “do is go to the authorities, [say someone] molested”
him/her and then that adult will go to court and either go to jail or be listed as a sex
offender.(120) I’m not saying it is wrong to give a child power, but then again I am saying that.
No one for sure will be able to prove someone guilt for a crime unless they have an alibi. As I
read this book over and over again I understand each time in a different way how challenging life
is, but I should never back down.