Analysis Of In The Waiting Room

Does adventure await at the cubical? In a drive-thru queue? In a dumpster? Most will insist no, that’s ridiculous. In reality, though, a plethora of exciting unknowns abound even the most common of situations. Adventure does not need to be found; it begs for acceptance all around us, but most people seldom embrace it, and if they do, its success is dependent on avoiding those uncomfortable situations (you know the ones). Sedaris, author of “In the Waiting Room,” instead adopts a different perspective. He thrives on adventure every instant he can in Paris, despite not knowing French, by simply saying okay, d’accord. But even when faced with uncomfortable situations (you know, those ones), Sedaris flips them back to the positive and continues

At the start of his article, a succession of sentences begin with him replying with ‘d’accord,’ followed by an immediate effect of this response: “‘D’accord,’ I told the concierge, and the next thing I knew I was sewing the eye onto a stuffed animal belonging to her granddaughter…‘D’accord,’ I said to the dentist, and she sent me to a periodontist, who took some X-rays and called me into his conference room for a little talk…‘D’accord,’ I said [to the dentist], and a week later...he...scraped great deposits of plaque from the roots of my teeth” (Sedaris). The consistent ‘d’accord,’ then “I said”/”I told,” continued with a second clause that starts with ‘and,’ followed by a consequence of saying ‘d’accord’ exemplifies adventure’s cause-and-effect nature. Sedaris defines initiating an adventure (which, given his language deficiency, means saying ‘d’accord’), and actually having an adventure (though each unique, always introduced by ‘and’ as elaboration of what ensued from saying ‘d’accord’), as one cohesive bundle; ‘d’accord’ is the only way to initiate these vastly different outcomes. The mere agreement to be receptive to an experience is the only way for new adventures to actually happen, and this word’s repetition forces it as both a prerequisite for and a guarantee of unlocking new opportunities, as these adventures only, yet always, follow Sedaris saying ‘d’accord’ to

For Sedaris, after another dedicated ‘d’accord,’ he finds himself in a pantless situation in a hospital. After first sitting down in the waiting room, he realizes the nurse likely instructed him to put on one of the robes. Maybe, just maybe, he missed that though because it was in French. Yet still, he does not want to imply his mistake to the other patients; he explains: “They’d think I was stupid, so to prove them wrong I decided to remain where I was and pretend that everything was normal. La la la” (Sedaris). Simply writing la la la, written exactly how the sound is made in his mind, eliminates an explanation or even an interpretation of the sound; Sedaris gives only an objective description of the noise. In doing so, the strategy implicitly hints Sedaris’s success at relaxing (i.e. “pretend[ing] that everything was normal,” the goal he indicates before the onomatopoeia). Sedaris achieved a fully relaxed state by not acknowledging the sound’s utility in helping him to relax--that in itself would be fixating on his embarrassment. Rather, he makes an infantile sound, la la la, and foregoes any analysis of what he did, because he was solely relaxing (or, more precisely, la la laing). Despite, albeit sarcastically, contemplating suicide further down into his time in the waiting room, he again calms