I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was cal… - David Sedaris

It was insulting to be told not to take too much of something you didn't really want in the first place.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, 'Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl'.

"I thought about this for days, just as I thought of the special-ed teacher I met in Pittsburgh. "You know," I said, "I hear those words and automatically think Handicapped, or, Learning disabled. But aren't a lot of your students just assholes?"

"You got it," she said. Then she told me about a kid - last day of class - who wrote on the blackboard, "Mrs. J____ is a cock master."

I was impressed because I'd never heard that term before. She was impressed because the boy had spelled it correctly."