I got a great telephone call yesterday from my cousin, Mark Venable, who lives in the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg, Fla. area. We talked about our oddities, neuroses, and various twitches. We both have a bunch of them. Mine are much less severe, though. I told Mark about a book I read last year called, Naked, by David Sedaris. Good friends, Wendy Timmons and Sally Morgan, gave me the book.

Back when I was first diagnosed with this kidney cancer, I found myself in the waiting room at the Emory Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta waiting for some kind of test and decided to start reading the book. Jill finally, reached over, put her hand on my arm, and said, “Baby, you’ve just got to stop laughing. This just isn’t an appropriate place to laugh.” Like I told my cousin, the first chapter of that book is the funniest thing I have ever read in my life. It is hysterically funny and I just couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Although I don’t have nearly the OCD quirks as David Sedaris, or even my cousin Mark, the hilarity that ensued with Sedaris’s various afflictions and affectations make for some really funny reading. I highly recommend this book.