From David Sedaris’ Naked:
When the teacher asked if she might visit with my mother, I touched my nose eight times to the surface of my desk. “May I take that as a ‘yes’?” she asked.
According to her calculations, I had left my chair twenty-eight times that day. “You’re up and down like a flea. I turn my back for two minutes and there you are with your tongue pressed against that light switch. Maybe they do that where you come from, but here in my classroom, we don’t leave our seats and lick things whenever we please. That is Miss Chestnut’s light switch and she likes to keep it dry. Would you like me to come over to your house and put my tongue on your light switches? Well, would you?”
I tried to picture her in action, but my shoe was calling. Take me off, it whispered. Tap my my heel against you’re forehead three times. Do it now, quick, no one will notice.
“Well?” Miss Chestnut raised her faint, penciled eyebrows. “I’m asking you a question. Would you or would you not want me licking the light switches in your house?”
I slipped off my shoe, pretending to examine the imprint on the heel.
“You’re going to hit yourself over the head with that shoe, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t “hitting” it was tapping; but still how had she known what I was about to do?
“Heel marks all over your forehead,” she said, answering my silent question. “You should take a look in the mirror sometime. Shoes are dirty things. We wear them on our feet to protect ourselves against the soil. It’s not healthy to hit ourselves over the head with shoes, is it?”
I guessed that it was not.
