Me Talk Pretty One Day

David’s father is a computer engineer for IBM whose job led his family to Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the child of Greek Orthodox immigrant parents whose strict upbringing prohibited him from taking part in many activities outside his immediate culture. He develops a love of jazz as a form of rebellion against his parents, a passion he tries to pass on unsuccessfully to his children. Sedaris reasons that his father’s upbringing as the child of immigrants during the Great Depression has also contributed to his frugal nature, often hoarding food past its prime and encouraging his children to sample fruit in grocery stores until caught by store managers.

Sedaris portrays his father as scientifically minded with a propensity for mechanical innovation and systems. However, where his father excels in the sciences, he seems to lack in social aptitude. Driven by his passion for explaining how things work, he does not notice other people’s lack of interest and proceeds with his explanations. Sedaris finds this quality endearing due to the sincerity of his father’s passions and good nature.

David’s mother is portrayed as a fun-loving parent who is unafraid of making jokes at her children’s expense. In her first appearance in the book, she expresses amusement at David’s failed attempt to trick his speech therapist into believing that he has overcome his speech impediment. Rather than admonish him for his trickery, she affectionately calls David a “sucker” (15). Later in Sedaris’s adulthood, she enlists David as the unfortunate victim of her Great Dane, Melina’s new trick in which the dog attacks him to protect his mother. Although David laments his ripped clothing as a result of Melina’s attack, his mother is bemused and touched by her dog’s protective nature. This manner of joking is inherited by her children who reciprocate by sending their mother fake cat euthanasia-related pamphlets after her cat passes away. 

Sedaris remarks that he has more in common with his mother than his father, “from smoking and napping to the writings of Sidney Sheldon” (33). His inappropriate sense of humor mirrors his mother’s own, a shared sensibility that marks the way his family communicates with one another.

Sedaris’s mother passed away at some point during his adulthood, a source of grief that he alludes to at several points throughout the book. 

Hugh is Sedaris’s current long-term boyfriend. They met through a mutual friend who recommended that David borrow a twelve-foot ladder from Hugh. At the time of their meeting, Hugh had just moved to a large SoHo loft in New York City after having lived six years in France. He owns a second home in Normandy, France, a fact that excites David during their first meeting.

Hugh grew up the child of a career officer for the U.S. State Department. As part of his father’s job, his family had to move around. They lived in various parts of Africa, including Ethiopia and Somalia. When Hugh was in high school, his father received a post in Somalia where there were no English-language schools. Rather than have Hugh live in Kentucky with his grandparents, his parents left him in the care of a family friend in Ethiopia. When that family decided to move to Germany, Hugh negotiated his stay with another family in Ethiopia. As a result of his unconventional childhood abroad, he grew accustomed to loneliness despite the colorful adventures in which he took part.

Sedaris affectionately makes Hugh the target or victim of many of his jokes. He tunes out Hugh at their first meeting by interjecting his own fantasies of living abroad in France, and vows “to trick or blackmail [Hugh] into making some sort of commitment” (155) to accomplish this objective. He also enlists Hugh in his various projects such as taking an IQ test, believing that Hugh is less intelligent than he by comparison and would make the results that much more satisfying. He cites Hugh’s various failures in basic intelligence to bolster this belief.