-Sam I Am

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“So are you ready to go, Lou?” Uncle Jesus asked, and Lou nodded cheerfully. It hopped into the seat beside him and waved goodbye to Sam and his mother, Jenny, who stood at the front door to wave them both goodbye. “Bye, Sam,” Lou called, but the car window was rolled up and made his voice come out all muffled. Uncle Jesus smiled to Jenny, who smiled back. Sam wondered exactly what those two knew that he didn’t, and nodded and smiled to Lou who didn’t notice because it had turned and said something to Uncle Jesus that made them both chuckle. It was strange, but Sam always felt very lonely when there were people who were laughing about something he didn’t know about. After Uncle Jesus and Lou had driven off, he wandered into his house.

It was Sam’s intention to immerse himself in video games, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to turn anything on. Instead, he lied down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, imagining what it would have been like if he was Uncle Jesus’s son and his name wasn’t Sam W but Sam Lam. He would have been brought up with deep spiritual beliefs and would console everyone around him, gaining tons of friends...’why am I imagining making friends?’ wondered Sam, who liked to justify his loneliness by insisting he didn’t need any friends. Sometimes, just sometimes, instead of blaming that bastard Spencer and everyone who ever alienated or bullied him, Sam would instead wonder what the hell was wrong with him that he couldn’t make more friends. Lou’s face appeared in his mind, and he tried to ask Lou in his imagination what it thought. The entire time, Lou would only smile. What did that mean? ‘Am I on the verge of a spiritual awakening?’ wondered Sam with a small laugh.

“Mom, lunch?” he called down the stairs. “Ha,” she called back tritely. Jenny always ‘ha’d instead of saying yes to Sam. Her laugh was more of a ‘hee hee hee’ than a ‘ha ha ha’, so there was never any confusion, but for some reason Sam wished that for once she would just say ‘yes, son, lunch is ready’ instead of barking at him like a dog. ‘That’s mean,’ he scolded himself on the way down the stairs. He’d punch somebody else in the face if they ever compared his mom to a dog, so there was no excuse for his thinking so.

Jenny set his plate in front of him with a smile. Triangle cut sandwiches. This was weird, since Sam couldn’t remember the last time Jenny actually cut his sandwiches special for him. “Love you, sweetie,” she said, and practically danced off into the kitchen. Sam nearly said ‘love you too’ but stopped himself to consider the situation. Mom was nearly prancing around the house cleaning, she was unusually happy, and her entire being glowed.

“Dad’s coming home?”

To Sam’s question, his mother beamed. Sam’s father, who was gone so often that Sam didn’t even know his name, was a business man from St. Paul who met his mother at a restaurant in Hong Kong, one of the only food joints that he went to which didn’t feature nude, oily women. Sam’s father wasn’t the promiscuous type, but he would always tag along with friends if they went to kinky strip clubs or massage parlors. This was something that the man actually told Jenny before they got married, in a weird demonstration of honesty, and she loved him all the more for it.

Not that it took much. Jenny was a shy young woman and had finished school a year ago when she and Sam’s father met. She felt lost and confused in the bustling world of finance in Hong Kong, and since she had no artistic talent there wasn’t much else of a choice besides take a hum drum office job where the only joy she ever got was once a week when she blew half her paycheck on the best fucking restaurant in town...the same restaurant that Sam’s father also frequented. He stepped on her foot, butchered the pronunciation of m’hou yi si (“sorry” in Cantonese), made her laugh, bought her more food, and they started dating. Sam’s father brought her back to the U.S., after Jenny’s pleading, and they had Sam after getting married.

However, Sam’s father’s job became threatened by younger and more educated men, and the only thing he could do was work twice as hard as usual. This meant he would have to go back to China for months at a time. He’d been gone a year and a half, corresponding every day with Jenny. Sam knew this and had even seen some of his father’s letters and emails to her; long, sorrowful, heartfelt. He had a lot of respect for this man he hardly knew because of these letters.

“Yes, in a week. He’s been promoted!” She laughed, and clapped once before getting back to dusting. Sam felt a wave of anticipation come over him and it wore him out. “I’m going to take a nap, I think,” he said, leaving the rest of his triangle sandwich on the table and his mother gazing puzzled at him from where she stood.

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Oh shut up, I know I should update more otherwise I'll lose all my reviewers. You think I'm a stranger to that? Sheesh, give me a break. It's a good thing that the time flow in a fictional world can be controlled by the writer who created it, you know what I mean?

You know what's an even better thing than talking about writing philosophy? Reviews. Just sayin'.