Last Night's Walk

It’s been pretty hot lately and because of it, Sam and I haven’t been for a walk in a while. But it rained (finally) over the last day and a half and after the rain left, cooler air came in. Sam and I decided to take advantage of it by going for a walk down to the store.

We didn’t really need anything but it gave us an excuse to get out, look around, and it gave Sam the chance to pretend to be looking at the clothes while really picking off any loose threads he finds.

We walked down to the store and on the way I, like usual, was asking Sam about his day and Sam, like usual, was giving me limited answers. This in turn, led me to ask followup questions to try and draw him out more - and this cycle pretty much repeated itself all the way down to the store.

None of this is unusual. People that don’t know Sam chock this up to him being a teenager. People that do know Sam know that sometimes it can be difficult for him to organize his thoughts, and he can struggle to find the words. But we had plenty of time.

We got to the store and my phone rang. It was Rachael. I told Sam to go ahead in and I would catch up with him. I stood outside, talking to Rachael, occasionally popping back into the store to peek at Sam.

When I peeked in at one point, he was reading one of those supermarket tabloids. When I looked in again, he was, as I had expected, pretending to be casually looking at the clothes while in reality, collecting loose threads off of the clothes.

I finished up with Rachael and I went inside asked Sam how he was doing. He said he was pretty much done and he seemed to be a little bit concerned. I asked him about it and he said, "Well, I was just reading some things and I was wondering about it.”

He showed me the magazine he had been reading and he told me what it was that he was concerned about.

First, he was concerned about Kenny Rogers' health. He doesn't follow Kenny Rogers, strictly speaking, but he does have kind of a soft spot for him, ever since he heard him sing on a commercial a while back.

Sam was also a little concerned that the president's wife was trying to do in Hillary Clinton. I don't know that he knows too much about the president's wife and I don't know that he knows anything at all about Hillary Clinton. But I do know Sam, and the idea of somebody trying to do in somebody else is not an idea that he's comfortable with.

On the walk home, I tried to explain to him that sometimes people write things that are true, but other times people write things that are just not true at all. And what’s maybe even harder to understand is that sometimes people might take a grain of truth and wind a completely made up story around it. Those, for me, are the hardest stories to figure out.

He didn’t understand why anyone would spend time writing things that just weren’t true and I told him that I didn’t understand it either, but it happens. It can be pretty messed up sometimes.

I told him that the best thing you can do, when you hear something or read something, is to check it out - either with a person you trust, or go online to a place you know is honest.

We talked a little bit more about it, but mostly, we just walked.

Back at home, I looked it up and apparently Kenny Rogers’ health really isn’t very good. Maybe I should have, but I didn't mention it to Sam. That’s a conversation for another day.