I think I mentioned awhile back that in Peru, Walker surprised me on my birthday with tickets to see David Sedaris on April 18th. (At the time, that date felt ages away).
So last night rolls around and neither of us were really too sure of what to expect - how could this tiny NPR man possibly entertain us for more than 30 minutes? Would it be like stand-up comedy?
It turned out to be a magical evening. I laughed a lot. I felt warm and cozy and thoroughly entertained.
He's just an excellent reader, a world-class storyteller and observer of life. And I don't think there's anything I love more than that.
Plus,
Earlier in the day, I thought to myself, wouldn't it be just super crazy amazing if he read from my favorite book, Me Talk Pretty One Day - a thought I quickly dismissed for its implausibility. He wrote that ages ago and probably never even reads from his books.
But mid-performance he announced that he would be doing something he rarely does because it's close to Easter and he's never read in Oklahoma before, he then proceeded to read aloud from my favorite story in Me Talk Pretty - Jesus Shaves (about a French class trying to cobble together a description of Easter with the language they've so far).
...I was over the moon. It was so delicious and I thoroughly soaked it up.
We also inexplicably waited in line until midnight to meet him and get him to sign a copy of the book he recommended to the audience: Tobias Wolff's The Barrack's Thief.
At one point, Walker had to run out to the closest 7-11 for lemonade, crunchy chips and a KitKat bar. We really wanted to ditch, but we'd been waiting for so long, we had to keep waiting so the initial waiting wouldn't be a complete and utter waste of time. Vicious cycle.
Once we actually got to the table, all three of us (Sedaris included) were so weary we all just kind of stared at each other trying to think up a sufficiently funny name for our trivia team to no avail.
