Us and Them

David Sedaris

1997

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented

house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade.
My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough
for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there
wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-
bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey
would hardly merit tears or even good-byes, for that matter. It was more
of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as
it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice.
I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.
Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks
or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here,
when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside
those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a
murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms,
watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by

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a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television. This was
told to us by our mother’s friend, who dropped by one afternoon with
a basketful of okra. The woman did not editorialize—rather, she just
presented her information, leaving her listener to make of it what she
might. Had my mother said, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in
my life,” I assume that the friend would have agreed, and had she said,
“Three cheers for Mr. Tomkey,” the friend likely would have agreed as
well. It was a kind of test, as was the okra.
To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying
that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master
plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought
too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in
television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don’t know that I believe
in it, either.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents
watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.
Word spread that Mr. Tomkey did not own a television, and you began
hearing that while this was all very well and good, it was unfair of him to
inflict his beliefs upon others, specifically his innocent wife and children.
It was speculated that just as the blind man develops a keener sense of
hearing, the family must somehow compensate for their loss. “Maybe they
read,” my mother’s friend said. “Maybe they listen to the radio, but you
can bet your boots they’re doing something.”
I wanted to know what this something was, and so I began peering
through the Tomkeys’ windows. During the day I’d stand across the street

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from their house, acting as though I were waiting for someone, and at
night, when the view was better and I had less chance of being discovered,
I would creep into their yard and hide in the bushes beside their fence.
Because they had no TV, the Tomkeys were forced to talk during din-
ner. They had no idea how puny their lives were, and so they were not
ashamed that a camera would have found them uninteresting. They did
not know what attractive was or what dinner was supposed to look like or
even what time people were supposed to eat. Sometimes they wouldn’t sit
down until eight o’clock, long after everyone else had finished doing the
dishes. During the meal, Mr. Tomkey would occasionally pound the table
and point at his children with a fork, but the moment he finished, everyone
would start laughing. I got the idea that he was imitating someone else,
and wondered if he spied on us while we were eating.
When fall arrived and school began, I saw the Tomkey children march-
ing up the hill with paper sacks in their hands. The son was one grade
lower than me, and the daughter was one grade higher. We never spoke,
but I’d pass them in the halls from time to time and attempt to view the
world through their eyes. What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?
Could a normal person even imagine it? Staring at an Elmer Fudd lunch
box, I tried to divorce myself from everything I already knew: Elmer’s
inability to pronounce the letter r, his constant pursuit of an intelligent
and considerably more famous rabbit. I tried to think of him as just a
drawing, but it was impossible to separate him from his celebrity.
One day in class a boy named William began to write the wrong answer
on the blackboard, and our teacher flailed her arms, saying, “Warning,

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Will. Danger, danger.” Her voice was synthetic and void of emotion,
and we laughed, knowing that she was imitating the robot in a weekly
show about a family who lived in outer space. The Tomkeys, though,
would have thought she was having a heart attack. It occurred to me that
they needed a guide, someone who could accompany them through the
course of an average day and point out all the things they were unable to
understand. I could have done it on weekends, but friendship would have
taken away their mystery and interfered with the good feeling I got from
pitying them. So I kept my distance.
In early October the Tomkeys bought a boat, and everyone seemed
greatly relieved, especially my mother’s friend, who noted that the motor
was definitely secondhand. It was reported that Mr. Tomkey’s father-
in-law owned a house on the lake and had invited the family to use it
whenever they liked. This explained why they were gone all weekend, but
it did not make their absences any easier to bear. I felt as if my favorite
show had been canceled.
Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, and by the time my mother
took us to the store, all the good costumes were gone. My sisters dressed
as witches and I went as a hobo. I’d looked forward to going in disguise
to the Tomkeys’ door, but they were off at the lake, and their house was
dark. Before leaving, they had left a coffee can full of gumdrops on the
front porch, alongside a sign reading DON’T BE GREEDY. In terms of
Halloween candy, individual gumdrops were just about as low as you could
get. This was evidenced by the large number of them floating in an adja-
cent dog bowl. It was disgusting to think that this was what a gumdrop

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might look like in your stomach, and it was insulting to be told not to take
too much of something you didn’t really want in the first place. “Who do
these Tomkeys think they are?” my sister Lisa said.
The night after Halloween, we were sitting around watching TV when
the doorbell rang. Visitors were infrequent at our house, so while my
father stayed behind, my mother, sisters, and I ran downstairs in a group,
opening the door to discover the entire Tomkey family on our front stoop.
The parents looked as they always had, but the son and daughter were
dressed in costumes—she as a ballerina and he as some kind of a rodent
with terry-cloth ears and a tail made from what looked to be an extension
cord. It seemed they had spent the previous evening isolated at the lake
and had missed the opportunity to observe Halloween. “So, well, I guess
we’re trick-or-treating now, if that’s okay,” Mr. Tomkey said.
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
called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called
begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things
you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that
the Tomkeys did not understand it.
“Why of course it’s not too late,” my mother said. “Kids, why don’t
you. . . run and get. . . the candy.”
“But the candy is gone,” my sister Gretchen said. “You gave it away
last night.”
“Not that candy,” my mother said. “The other candy. Why don’t you
run and go get it?”

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 “You mean our candy?” Lisa said. “The candy that we earned?”
This was exactly what our mother was talking about, but she didn’t
want to say this in front of the Tomkeys. In order to spare their feelings,
she wanted them to believe that we always kept a bucket of candy lying
around the house, just waiting for someone to knock on the door and ask
for it. “Go on, now,” she said. “Hurry up.”
My room was situated right off the foyer, and if the Tomkeys had
looked in that direction, they could have seen my bed and the brown
paper bag marked MY CANDY. KEEP OUT. I didn’t want them to know
how much I had, and so I went into my room and shut the door behind me.
Then I closed the curtains and emptied my bag onto the bed, searching
for whatever was the crummiest. All my life chocolate has made me ill. I
don’t know if I’m allergic or what, but even the smallest amount leaves me
with a blinding headache. Eventually, I learned to stay away from it, but
as a child I refused to be left out. The brownies were eaten, and when the
pounding began I would blame the grape juice or my mother’s cigarette
smoke or the tightness of my glasses—anything but the chocolate. My
candy bars were poison but they were brand-name, and so I put them in
pile no. 1, which definitely would not go to the Tomkeys.
Out in the hallway I could hear my mother straining for something to
talk about. “A boat!” she said. “That sounds marvelous. Can you just
drive it right into the water?”
“Actually, we have a trailer,” Mr. Tomkey said. “So what we do is
back it into the lake.”
“Oh, a trailer. What kind is it?”

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 “Well, it’s a boat trailer,” Mr. Tomkey said.
“Right, but is it wooden or, you know. . . I guess what I’m asking is
what style trailer do you have?”
Behind my mother’s words were two messages. The first and most ob-
vious was “Yes, I am talking about boat trailers, but also I am dying.”
The second, meant only for my sisters and me, was “If you do not im-
mediately step forward with that candy, you will never again experience
freedom, happiness, or the possibility of my warm embrace.”
I knew that it was just a matter of time before she came into my
room and started collecting the candy herself, grabbing indiscriminately,
with no regard to my rating system. Had I been thinking straight, I
would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but
instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore
off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth,
desperately, like someone in a contest. Most were miniature, which made
them easier to accommodate, but still there was only so much room, and
it was hard to chew and fit more in at the same time. The headache began
immediately, and I chalked it up to tension.
My mother told the Tomkeys she needed to check on something, and
then she opened the door and stuck her head inside my room. “What in
the world are you doing?” she whispered, but my mouth was too full to
answer. “I’ll just be a moment,” she called, and as she closed the door
behind her and moved toward my bed, I began breaking the wax lips and
candy necklaces pulled from pile no. 2. These were the second-best things
I had received, and while it hurt to destroy them, it would have hurt even

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more to give them away. I had just started to mutilate a miniature box
of Red Hots when my mother pried them from my hands, accidentally
finishing the job for me. BB-size pellets clattered onto the floor, and as I
followed them with my eyes, she snatched up a roll of Necco wafers.
“Not those,” I pleaded, but rather than words, my mouth expelled
chocolate, chewed chocolate, which fell onto the sleeve of her sweater.
“Not those. Not those.”
She shook her arm, and the mound of chocolate dropped like a horrible
cowpatty upon my bedspread. “You should look at yourself,” she said. “I
mean, really look at yourself.”
Along with the Necco wafers she took several Tootsie Pops and half
a dozen caramels wrapped in cellophane. I heard her apologize to the
Tomkeys for her absence, and then I heard my candy hitting the bottom
of their bags.
“What do you say?” Mrs. Tomkey asked.
And the children answered, “Thank you.”
While I was in trouble for not bringing my candy sooner, my sisters
were in more trouble for not bringing theirs at all. We spent the early
part of the evening in our rooms, then one by one we eased our way back
upstairs, and joined our parents in front of the TV. I was the last to arrive,
and took a seat on the floor beside the sofa. The show was a Western,
and even if my head had not been throbbing, I doubt I would have had
the wherewithal to follow it. A posse of outlaws crested a rocky hilltop,
squinting at a flurry of dust advancing from the horizon, and I thought
again of the Tomkeys and of how alone and out of place they had looked

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in their dopey costumes. “What was up with that kid’s tail?” I asked.
“Shhhh,” my family said.
For months I had protected and watched over these people, but now,
with one stupid act, they had turned my pity into something hard and ugly.
The shift wasn’t gradual, but immediate, and it provoked an uncomfortable
feeling of loss. We hadn’t been friends, the Tomkeys and I, but still I had
given them the gift of my curiosity. Wondering about the Tomkey family
had made me feel generous, but now I would have to shift gears and find
pleasure in hating them. The only alternative was to do as my mother had
instructed and take a good look at myself. This was an old trick, designed
to turn one’s hatred inward, and while I was determined not to fall for
it, it was hard to shake the mental picture snapped by her suggestion:
here is a boy sitting on a bed, his mouth smeared with chocolate. He’s a
human being, but also he’s a pig, surrounded by trash and gorging himself
so that others may be denied. Were this the only image in the world,
you’d be forced to give it your full attention, but fortunately there were
others. This stagecoach, for instance, coming round the bend with a cargo
of gold. This shiny new Mustang convertible. This teenage girl, her hair a
beautiful mane, sipping Pepsi through a straw, one picture after another,
on and on until the news, and whatever came on after the news.