Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: The Peanut Gallery: Sam

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. I had a mighty fine meal, myself.

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I almost feel bad making fun of Sam now because he turned out to be a cool kid. I saw him recently at a party and he wasn’t the same Sam from high school. He was working on a highly rated television show at the time, had some fun stories and just made for a good night. So, I almost feel bad making fun of Sam.

Almost.

Sam was one of the first dudes I met in high school. He lived in our neighborhood but I never really knew him before. G and the rest of the crew knew him, there was some weird connection between a gun club those guys belonged to – friend of a friend kind of stuff. But Sam went to a different elementary school and junior high so I never even knew he existed until G introduced me.

You see, Sam’s father picked him up after school everyday. It would normally take us an hour to get home from school by way of bus and train – this ride made Sam a precious commodity and we instantly became buddy-buddy with him. G’s pops would sometime take us to school in the mornings and we’d get an occasional ride home from Alex’s father but this shit was constant ride home.

I’m realizing now that I’m probably going to make fun of Sam’s father more than Sam. I think our negativity towards Sam stemmed from his father’s…eccentricities. We noticed them early, for instance he refused to take the highway home. Taking the highway was easily a twenty-minute trip. Taking the streets was closer to 45 minutes. But he liked the streets, they were calming, so he took the streets. While playing really boring talk radio. But we stuck it out.

He also dropped us all off in front of his house. Now, this was fine, I guess – but Sam’s house was about ¾ mile from our houses. So we had to walk a bit. You’d think after taking his sweet-ass time getting home taking the streets he would take the two minute detour and drop us off a little closer to our houses. But no, he dropped us off and then went off to park the car. Whatever.

There was this kid Andrew we started taking home as well. Andrew lived in a different neighborhood, it was about a ten minute detour. Andrew got dropped off at his door. We didn’t complain, it was still better than the bus and train, so we stuck it out.

Then one day we get to the pick-up spot and find not only Andrew in the car but two other kids who never rode home with us before and happened to live in Andrew’s neighborhood. Sam’s father tells us, “Oh, sorry, we don’t have room for you guys anymore.”

They didn’t have room for us anymore, obviously. Despite the fact that we were his son’s friends and we lived in the same fucking neighborhood as him there wasn’t room for us anymore. Homeboy peels out, leaving us standing around with our dicks in our hands and forced to hop on the bus home.

Needless to say we stopped hanging out with Sam after that. He became the butt of many a joke for quite some time. We started integrating him back into the crew senior year or so but I never really liked him.

After the whole carpool thing I’d always see his father on the streets and at first I’d wave to him or say “hi” but the father wouldn’t even look at me. I never really got it, was never really explained exactly what the fuck happened there.

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The Peanut Gallery: Sam

Friday, November 25, 2005

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