Go Carolina

Speech Pathologist Chrissy Samson took on David as a therapy student along with three other boys in his elementary school. Sedaris depicts her as an agent, or interrogator, aligning with its use of the spy thriller trope to allude to the subject of adults addressing the outward symptoms of a child’s identity to try to change it because they consider it illicit. Samson arrived at the school wearing a “dung-colored blazer a red knit turtleneck and sensibly low heels” (1).

The essay portrays her as “slightly dopey, inexperienced” (5), and ineffective at her job. Reflecting society as a whole, she didn’t appear to value individual differences and instead worked to force her young students to conform, depriving them of their uniqueness. A harsh, cold young woman, she was seen by the students she worked with as trying to “change” them and even resorted to trickery to dupe them into revealing their speech disability. She’s essentially the antagonist to Sedaris’s protagonist, David, as she was the agent of change and the one who made David try to do things “the hard way” (1). She indicated she should have a sign on her door saying “SPEECH THERAPY LAB,” but Sedaris comments that it should have read “Future Homosexuals of America” (3).

In the end, she left the school, and Sedaris triumphantly notes that Samson didn’t successfully change the lisp in her students. However, on his last day with her, she revealed that she wasn’t really a lackluster “Agent” out to “get” him and his lisping peers. Like them, she had interests and activities that she loved but felt the pressure of fitting into the societal expectations of her job as a tough, rigid speech therapist. Thus, Sedaris shows that society’s pressures to conform can affect everyone, regardless of their role.

Each week, David’s teacher announced to the entire class that it was time for his speech therapy appointment, which he understandably found embarrassing and humiliating. In David’s mind, she may as well have declared it was time for his anti-gay therapy.

Three other boys in his school had to attend speech therapy too. Sedaris notes that they all tried to cover up their gay identities to survive socially. He sardonically comments how they’d respond to the question of what they wanted to be when they grew up by naming the professions of men they fantasized about.