Two Fridays ago, my girlfriend and I trekked up to a Barnes and Noble in suburban Skokie to see the one and only David Sedaris. While I do enjoy hearing him read his stories on NPR, I’ll have to admit that it is my girlfriend who has recently been quite smitten with the author.

Upon first arrival, I couldn’t help but notice the hoards of people who were there to see Mr. Sedaris. I was especially surprised to see so many teenagers there! The closest thing I read like his work during my high school days was Catcher in the Rye.

More pictures and the rest of the story after the jump.

We were greeted by two women at the door handing out flyers with numbers on them that indicated our particular number in line to get our book signed. 287. That’s a long time to wait in line.

One of the women asked, “So are you big David Sedaris fans?”
We nodded. “So what books of his have you read? And which ones?”
My grand total: 0. My girlfriend pipes up, “3…Je Parler Francais…uh…”

Literally, I to speak French, aka, Me Talk Pretty One Day. Yes, she actually read the French translated version. The woman was quite impressed, and pulled out a flyer from the back of her stack.

5. Circled. We just cut in front of 282 people.

So we heard him talk; he read a few excerpts from a book he edited, and a New York Times piece that was yet to be published. He was quite the entertainer.

After the reading came the frenzied commotion of getting in line for the signing. With only four people in front of my girlfriend (the third who had 9 books for him to sign), we got out of there pretty quickly.