Response to: David Sedaris: "That's Amore"

David Sedaris's "That's Amore" primarily focuses on Helen. Helen is Sedaris's elderly and spunky neighbor while he and his good friend and writing partner Hugh lived in a dodgy New York apartment building. The essay goes on to describe Helen in great detail as an "Arrogant, pushy, proudly, almost fascistically opinionated" woman with an extremely quotable personality. On Hugh's first encounter with Helen she immediately insists that he carries her groceries for her, no questions. Upon Sedaris's first encounter with the woman, she tells him, "Mess with me, and I'll stick my foot so far up your ass I'll lose my shoe.'" Although from the outward appearance, Helen appears rude and unpleasant, Sedaris describes his relationship with her as if she were a "grandmother". Sedaris found that when he didn't get his always daily interaction with her he "missed her, or at least missed someone [he] could so easily drop in on." The author found that the “beauty of Helen" was that "she was always there, practically begging to be disturbed." At times he would call her a "friend" but quickly second guess his choice of language with statements like "Was that a friend, or had I chosen the wrong word? What was the name for this thing we had?" Helen is once described by a short anecdote explaining how she would stubbornly only give gifts to those who do not ask for them. It is obvious that Helen must also see a friend in Sedaris as she calls him one day when she has "taken three strokes" and again when, with some humor on Sedaris's part, she asks him to fetch her dentures from the "planter in front of [the] building". Nearing the end of his essay, Sedaris seems to have some guilt about the end of his relationship with Helen. One day, Helen asks the author to put some shoe polish on a stain on the ceiling of her apartment. For unknown reasons, Sedaris quickly tell her "tomorrow" and leaves. Later that day, Hugh hears a crash in Helen's apartment. She had tried to apply to polish to her ceiling herself and fell off the stool, resulting in a broken hip. While in the hospital, "the problem wasn't her broken hip, but the series of strokes that followed her operation." At her funeral, Sedaris meets many of Helen's friends and family and they reflect on the hilarity of Helen's life. In a final reflection, Sedaris thinks back to a day when Helen was feeling some pain in her shoulder. She had asked him to rub some Tiger Balm on the area and he obliged.

            There is this woman, her name is Carol, and I have been performing in shows with her since I was a sophomore in high school. While reading David Sedaris’s essay, all I could think of was this woman and they way I felt about her. It is uncannily similar to Sedaris’s relationship with Helen. No, Carol is not an eighty-year-old senile woman, although she shares many characteristics with Helen. She is so very stubborn. She is also a complainer. Oh my, I could go on for hours about how negative Carol is. She is about sixty-years-old, and therefore, is always cast as the mother or grandmother in all the show’s I have been in with her. Every time, without fail, Carol will feel the need to complain how the director sees her as old or doesn’t think her acting capabilities are good enough for a more “important” role. Deep down, I believe, Carol understands why she is given these roles, but she enjoys the complaining regardless. Although, I am not a big fan of negativity (especially in the theatre), I still find myself loving Carol as if she were a close family member of mine. I feel I can speak for the rest of our past casts by saying each of us has had an encounter with Carol and her complaining, and each of us has just stood there, listened intently and enjoyed our conversations with Carol. She has an infectious and engaging personality.

            I would like to ask the author why he felt the need to explain so many similar anecdotes to the audience instead of just describing the woman in detail. Sedaris seemed to let the audience make their own judgments of Helen, based on the stories he told. Did he mean to use so much negative connotation? Or were those the honest descriptions of the events? I cannot pinpoint how the author managed to make the reader still have a fondness for Helen, despite the annoying stories he told about her. I must also always ask why the author found Helen a significant person to write about.