Sam: The new Kyle?

Not my Sam but another one. I'll set the stage. We were at a birthday party on Sunday for Samson's friend Madelyn, who is 4. Our friends live in a rural part of Virginia, so they have a sizable backyard and for the party had a hay ride and a pony.

Their backyard also has a swing set with rope/ladder thingy to climb and this was pretty much all Samson wanted to do. He did enjoy the hayride but not as much as being able to climb.

To be honest, they could have had Sesame Street meets Burning Man in their backyard and Samson wouldn't have noticed.

As guests arrived, it was funny to watch the kids size each other up. For the most part, they all played really well together. Which is pretty impressive given that there were 4- and 5-year-old girls and 3- and 4-year-old boys, who, developmentally, might as well be different species.

I digress. At one point, a small boy who appeared to be Samson's age arrived with his mother and a sleeping infant. This boy's name was Sam. And Sam, which may have been short for SonofSam, was bad news.

I've often thought that it would be helpful --- as a way of gauging whom to approach and whom to avoid --- if people came with theme music. I like to think that my entrances would be accompanied by something from Curtis Mayfield. Or maybe Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows."

Anyway, if such an aid existed, this kid Sam would be accompanied by the opening movement of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Or maybe the music from "The Omen."



So Samson saw Sam and another kid (this one inexplicably named after a rock in Europe) playing with trucks. Assuming they were kindred spirits, Samson went over to play. At which point Sam turned and growled. Loudly. Like the feral kid in the Mad Max movies. Which not only startled Samson [not a lot of growling at his school or among his friends] but made him cry.

I happened to be playing with Jane and so missed most of this but came in on the tail end of things, i.e., the crying. Vicki, because she is wise, thought it best to let the kids sort it out themselves. [For my part, I would much rather have been admonishing Samson for pasting this kid in the face than reassuring him that he'd done nothing wrong and simply needed to tell Sam not to bother him.]

Of course, I wouldn't change Samson for anything, but I do tend to lose perspective when I see him getting his feelings hurt. He pretty much stayed away from Sam for the rest of the party, but he did keep tabs on him. And every once in a while he'd call out across the yard: "Hi Sam. You're mean." Presumably he's hard at work right now on a letter to the editor.

Obviously, all this is part of growing up, and Samson needs to learn to fend for himself. And for the most part he does pretty well. But man, this Sam kid was weird. And indeed, mean.