Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day is about Sedaris’s experience with his French teacher while he attended a school in Paris. He had a very rude teacher who hated her students and who  said mean things about them.

While reading this story, I kept thinking of how mean the teacher was and how I hated her. I didn’t like how she treated her students nor how she spoke ill of them. I don’t like the demeaning things she said about her students that lowered their self-esteem to the point where they “cry alone at night.”

I wouldn’t be able to go through what Sedaris had gone through. If a teacher was constantly humiliating me and saying that she hated me, I would feel less inclined to do work or stay in that class. I would try everything I could to get out of the class. If someone kept telling me that I sucked at French and there was no one to believe that I could excel in it, I would probably believe the teacher. I probably would not have the confidence to speak and eventually give up on the language. As I would have easily given up, Sedaris sticks with it. He stays and puts up with all the belittling comments. He is determined to get learn French and his determination pays off because in the end, he was able to understand every word the teacher was saying.

When everything the teacher said started making sense to Sedaris, it reminded me of the saying “tough love”. The teacher was putting up a mean front to help the students understand the language better. There was a part of me hoping that that this was the case and that in the end, she would turn out to be an awesome, kind teacher and I would start to like her. After reading the whole story, I came to the conclusion that she really was this wicked person who hated her students. Nonetheless, it could still be considered tough love since Sedaris got something out of it.

I like the way Sedaris wrote this piece. While I was reading this, I felt what he was feeling. When he was anxiously waiting for his turn to speak, I was nervous with him. When he was being ostracized by the teacher, I felt dumb too. When he realized he understood the teacher completely, I was shocked and ecstatic as he was. I like how I was able to feel what he was feeling and the emotions the story put me through.