Tragically Fine

Sewers, Sandwiches, and Sam

Posted by Kyle Jacobson , Saturday, September 4, 2010 3:16 PM

"One-hundred-sixty-three."
"One-hundred-sixty-four."
"One-hundred-sixty-five."
         Sam Longstreet had a bowl of cereal every morning with exactly two-hundred-and-sixty pieces of cereal. If Sam had more or less than two-hundred and sixty pieces of cereal for breakfast he would be an emotional wreck for several days following the incident. It wasn't the amount of sugar. It wasn't the time it took him to eat it. It wasn't even the way the beautiful square-ish pieces floated gently atop the dairy product. Some doctors say he has OCD. Others say he's just mental and that he should pay them another $40 to prove that he's not mental.  None of these doctors seemed to satisfy the question within Sam of "what's wrong with me." So about a month ago, give or take a couple of years, Sam went into the nearest alleyway to contemplate his existence in life. He didn't get very far.
          "Hello." A voice echoed through the alley.
          "Who am I?" Asked Sam.
          "You're Sam." Replied Sam.
          "Well, then who are you?" There was obviously a viscous fog of confusion. The confusion was partly due to the conversation, but mostly due to the word viscous.
          "I'm Sam," Replied Sam. Sam had a confused, "Sam-like," look on his face.
          "Well we can't both be Sam."
          "Alright. So what do you suggest we do then?"
          "I'm not sure."
          "Well, I'm at a loss as well. How are we ever going to keep track of the changes in dialogue that we're making right now?"
      Moments of pointless contemplation passed.
          "I've got it!" Sam said while contemplating which Sam he was, "We'll pick different names!"
          "Okay. That sounds unprovenly intelligent! I'll be Peter. Now you choose your name."
          "Alright. I'll also be Peter."
          "That completely defeats the purpose!"
          The people formerly known as Sam both became bored of such mindless bickering and began to contemplate life again, together. Once again, they did not get very far.
     The reason for such a story was only to illustrate that Sam has the same IQ as the cereal that he's currently counting.
          "One-hundred-ninety-six."
         It never occurred to Sam that he was different than other people. He had always considered himself to be very normal. He went around naively thinking that everyone else was the weird one.

         It also had never, not even once, occurred to Sam that he was going to save the world this morning.

         Sam began walking as most Sams do. The air was fried and crispy this morning. The trees had just awoken from their slumber party; The same slumber party in which they decided to put the oak's branch in a bowl of water. Oak woke up to realize that he had wet his trunk, again.

         Sam tripped over everything that he could possibly trip over; then he tripped over a few things that appeared physically impossible to trip over. Sam hated when he did things that appeared impossible. And while he thought how much he hated it, he tripped again.

          He got up and continued to walk. He had been walking for quite a while without any tripping; a smile began to grow on his face. He tripped again. This time over a thirty-foot tall statue of Winona Ryder. "Stupid impossibilities," he thought. Sam caught his balance with just enough time to  stumble painfully across the street and onto a sewer drain cover which inadvertently saved the world.
    
         You see, at that very moment there was a small bomb filled with toxic chemicals being placed on the inside of a very specific sewer drain, by a man, unimportantly named Jake.   Once Sam tripped clumsily over the sewer drain, it sent a vibration that counteracted the
type of glue holding up the bomb. The bomb fell like an imaginary bird does when you shoot it with an imaginary bullet. The bomb floated along its way through the stream of sewage.

          Jake was sitting down eating a sandwich, wondering why he was eating a sandwich, that he never remembered making, and of all places, in a sewer drain. Then he remembered, "mmmmm.... Delicious!"  He never would find out what happened to the bomb. The bomb only knew that it was floating aimlessly down the "river of dreams," as nobody called it. It eventually wound up trapped in a box used for donuts and sat there quietly.

          The bomb never saw it coming. Nobody saw it coming.
          The bomb went off.
           But, it was so logged with fecal matter, shredded denim, dead puppies, and other things found inside sewer drains, that it didn't make it past the bomb's outer layer. The only casualty that happened in this episode of failed genocide would be Jake. And not by the bomb going off, but by the sandwich he just ate. He contracted 73 different diseases, 21 viruses, 63 bacterial infections, 5 children, 2 extra limbs, and a mutated partridge in, what looks like, a pear tree.

          Moral of this story: Don't dunk your sandwiches in underground sewer rivers.
                  
                                                   Marginally,
                                                                    Kyle