Sam’s Walking Tour

By Pauline ZHOU

Sam

Words Checked: 3483

Words in Oxford 3000: 95%

Synopsis

This book is about Sam’s life, which

contains some stories that happened on

him, maybe would make you laugh and

maybe would make you cry. They are

about love between families, friends and

lovers.

I could not know what the end of

Sam’s story or your story is, because

the lives are continuing unaware and it

means “Endless and Everlasting.”

Introduction to the Author

Pauline ZHOU, is the student in Wenzao,

37th English Class A minored French,

Number 26. Love to read and study, but

hate to have examinations. Love to do

sports, but love to be lazy. Want to be

healthy, but always stay up late. A cute,

gentle girl but has a lot of not-so-good

habits. To begin writing this novel in the

summer, but come through fall and winter,

perhaps it will be finished in

spring. Walking tour of Sam

and also walking tour of

Pauline…

Content

Introduction to the author

Chapter 1

The birth of Sam．．．．．．P. 1~ P. 4

Chapter 2

The childhood life of Sam．．P. 5~ P. 10

Chapter 3

The boy Sam．．．．．．．P. 11~ P. 16

Chapter 4

The teenager Sam．．．．．．P. 17~ P.21

Chapter 5

The grown adult Sam．．．．．P.22~ P.28

Chapter 6

Marriage of Sam．．．．．．P.29~ P. 32

Chapter 7

The end of Sam．．．．．．P.33~ P. 36

Chapter 8

What I think about Sam．．．P.37~ P. 40

1

Chapter 1－The Birth of Sam

Who is Sam? He is the son of the

couple, Joy and Julie. They were from

different states in America: Joy was from

Washington, and Julie was from Florida.

They met in New York City when they

were studying in the university, and fell in

love at first sight. In 1998, they married.

At that time everyone felt very happy that

these two people who loved each other so

much finally got married.

Joy, an engineer in a computer

company, lives with his mother, Ms.

2

Brently. After three years of marriage,

Julie got pregnant. Their whole family

including their friends all felt very pleased

about the coming baby. The future-father

and mother were the most excited ones, so

one day they were talking about the boy’s

name, “Julie, I have the names for our

baby, if ‘he’ is a boy, let’s call him ‘Sam’,

or if ‘she’ is a girl, how about ‘Sue’? ”

“I like names composed of three letters,”

said Joy. “That’s great, Sam and Sue!”

answered Julie. As they decided the name

of their son, they felt happy with the

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coming child and had great hope for him.

In March, Joy and Julie’s first child is

coming out soon. “He must be a

spring-time boy!” said Ms. Brently

happily, when she and Julie were sitting in

the living room chatting. Julie was waiting

for Joy to pick her up to go to the hospital

for having the examination. The child’s

grandma had already used the holiday to

do shopping for the baby’s clothing and

equipment. This can see how excited

grandma is to expect the child.

Joy’s ex-high-school classmate, Frank,

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dropped by one day and he just heard of

coming baby. He brought some toys for

“him”, and also as a doctor, gave some

points for attention to the mom, Julie.

Everyone waits excitedly at the coming of

Sam.

5

Chapter 2－The childhood life of Sam

On 11th March of 2002, a loud-crying

boy came to the earth, and his name was

“Sam”. He was a little fat baby and his

skin looked like Chinese-tofu, white and

sparkling. He was so lovable that

suddenly there were a lot of guests coming

to Joy’s house to chat with Julie and Ms.

Brently. In fact, they just wanted to play

with cute Sam. Sam was born in this

family, which was full of love, so loud

laughing was always heard around Joy’s

house.

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When Sam was about three years old,

a miserable thing happened. Sam’s

grandma was dying: she got sick and lain

on the bed for more than a month. Then

one morning, quietly and peacefully, she

was gone. All of the neighbors are sad

about it, only the little Sam was just

unhappy about missing his grandma and

had no idea what was happening. His

father, Joy was calm and tried to ask his

son to pray for his grandma for a while.

After the funeral, Joy talked to Julie

to say that he felt really sad about his

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mother’s death. Julie comforted him

saying, “I’m also sad for this, but you

know what, Jo? It is just a routine of life,

and the final destination is death. Every

one always thinks that dead people just

leave the earth and never come back, but

actually they are still standing there seeing

us to go on walking our life. Look at Sam,

how cute and innocent he is. Maybe we

should learn the child’s way of looking at

life and death. It is useless to be

depressed. You must be happy for the

reason they are watching us going on and

secretly helping us.”

Although grandma

could not beside Sam

anymore, he would meet

other people in his future life. One

afternoon, he was playing in the park, and

he was looking at the sand castle he had

made. Suddenly, a boy was crying and

running fast toward Sam. The superb sand

castle was destroyed by the boy’s

unexpected approach. His name was

Fannie, and he just escaped from home

because his parents were having quarrel.

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They had some financial problems, and

they were discussing with shouting angrily,

loudly and noisily. Instead of being angry

with the destructor, Sam

walked towards Fannie

and asked him to come

along to rebuild. In a short

time, they were happy to become good

partners, to walk out and to play together.

Fannie was slowly influenced by this

joyful boy, so he became nicer and gentler.

One year later, when Sam was four,

Julie became pregnant with her second

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child. And then the following year, 2006,

the Joy’s family added a new member,

Sam’s sister, Sue. She was not born

healthily, because Julie had been in

difficult labor. After Sue’s birth, Sam was

always playing in the hospital instead of

the park. He could not meet Fannie very

often, but the friendship of these two boys

was unbreakable.

Chapter 3－The Boy Sam

Sam was now a seven-year-old boy

and he was able to do all the house works

by himself. He did the great help for his

father Joy, because Joy was too busy to do

on complicated household chores.

Sam began to

study in school, and

there are a lot of

students from other

countries, like

Chinese, French, and Indian... Luckily,

Sam and Fannie were in the same class, so

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12

they always studied together in the library.

They also became friends with some of

the foreign students. For example, the

Chinese student, Gerry, loved to teach

others their difficult Chinese words and

was always nervous for doing tests.

Francois, the French exchange student,

loved to chat with other girls, even the

beautiful female teachers. He did not pay

lots of attentions on studies all the time, so

he often got the worst grades in the class.

Although he was not so good at getting

points, he could use his fluent English to

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talk with people.

Among the four students, Sam, Fannie,

Gerry and Francois, most of the teachers

liked Sam better. He was always the most

diligent student in the class, and finished

all the homework on time. He did not get

the high grades of all the tests but he

always smiled at what he had got. In other

people’s point of view, they also think that

Sam was a great boy, and he truly was.

However, there was still something that

waited for Sam to face and solve.

In third grade, there was tragedy

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astonishing his peaceful and joyful family.

While driving to visit Sam’s mother in the

hospital, tired Joy hit the tree for dodging

a dog . This car accident caused them lose

the core of home－it was his father, Joy.

This was really a sudden change for his

family, because his father was the origin

of responsible for the financial income.

They not only had to face financial

difficulty but also the absent of the center

of the family.

After knowing this news, the whole

family was in the dark mood. Sam was so

15

sad that his father would never come back

again like his grandma. He did not want to

go to school and was crying in his room.

Few days later his mother, Julie was still

sad but wanted to tell him something,

“Now, Sam, don’t be like that. Your father

would not want you to be sad. He always

wanted you to have hope and persistence

for life,’’ said Julie. “Think back your life

so far, there are some people coming, like

your sister, Sue and your friends, but there

are some people leaving. In fact they had

never been gone. They are still standing

16

there and watching you continue

walking in life. Maybe you would not be

used to it at first, but I believe you would

understand later on. Don’t be so depressed,

be brave and keep going on,” said Julie.

Sam did not understand his mother’s

meaning, but he promised her to be brave.

At the beginning of fourth grades,

Sam got a part-time job to deliver

newspapers in the early morning. He liked

this job, and he learned to transfer the

sadness to be more positive of the new

life.

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Chapter 4－The Teenager Sam

It is not enough for his family’s large

spent although his father did leave some

money for them. Sam began to work as a

newsboy when he was ten, but he never

gave up his study and school life. He was

still a good student and did a very good

job on studying. He also loved to play

baseball after school with his friends. By

Sam’s hard working, the money that he

earned from the job as newsboy was not

enough for his family’s large spending.

Fortunately, his mother Julie got a job as a

secretary by their neighbor’s introduction

when Sam was in the junior high school.

As Sam was getting older, he felt more

responsibility for taking care his mom, his

sister, and the whole family.

One day, a

classmate which was

named Allen was

from a big and rich

family, and he did not like Sam and

wanted to make some joke on him. Allen’s

joke was not funny at all. He was rude and

unpleasant with Sam to say that Sam’s

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father died because of his mother’s

extramarital relation with someone else.

Sam was extremely angry and he tried to

punish this bad boy. Suddenly, the two

boy got fight. Teacher and other

classmates were shocked and they quickly

stopped the fighting. This event was ended

when Allen finally said sorry to Sam and

promised that he would never make jokes

on him again.

These days Sam had lived under a

kind of difficulty and stress. One night his

mother asked to talk to him,” Sam, now

you become the center of our family, but

you are still a child, a

student. I hope you can

make more efforts on what

you really want to do. Stop

sending the newspaper and concentrate on

your study.” Sam nodded and thanked his

mother’s understanding.

Sam worked very hard on his study.

Very soon, he won scholarships when he

was in high school. The money of the

scholarships made their life become better.

Mother Julie no longer

20

had to worry about how to earn more

money. Experiencing the sweets and the

bitters with his family, with his faithful

friends they played; they studied together,

and had a good time with each other.

Successfully, he graduated and entered the

New York University.

21

Chapter 5－The Grown Adult Sam

The days in University

were not funny at all,

because they always had

many different kinds of

reports to discuss, to work on, and to hand

in. Passing through the tough first year,

Sam now was a second year student in the

Department of computer science.

In a day of summer, a

car bumped into Sam

because he wanted to rescue

a little cat from the middle of

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the street. The owner of this cat wanted to

thank Sam, and that was how Sam met

Merry, the owner of the cat. They fell in

love and got together two weeks later.

They both loved to read and to walk

slowly around the school. Everyone, even

themselves thought that they would get

married after graduating. However, things

did not go so smoothly, they broke up

when Sam was in the fourth year.

Certainly they once did have loved

each other deeply, but in fact this

relationship did not suit them. They

argued and always ended with anger. They

did not want to communicate with each

other, so their problems were getting

bigger and bigger. After three months of

their breakup, Merry had a new boyfriend.

Although this made Sam really sad and

depressed, mother Julie talked to him with

a gentle voice, “Little boy, you two are

still young, and it is too early to treat her

as your future wife. Later,

you are always friends.”

Sam got through the rest

of his university life.

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After graduating he entered a computer

company as a computer engineer.

It is not a very big company.

Although Sam did not get much money

but he did the job happily as his interest.

At that time, he fell in love with Jane.

They had known each other since Sam and

Jane was in the university, but Jane was

two years older than Sam. They had good

time with each other. They often went out

for dinner and saw a movie. After four

years of hard working, Sam was lucky to

get a promotion to be manager of the

26

research department. Sam and Jane were

planning to get married soon. One day he

saw his ex-classmate Allen who was the

rich and proud boy he hit before meeting

his girlfriend, Jane. He did not ask her the

reason why they met often because he was

afraid of knowing that Allen was chasing

her. Few days later, he saw even the

chairperson, Dr. Norton, Allen’s father

talking with Jane. He thought that his boss

was saying some good word of his son,

Allen and wanted Jane to marry him.

“What is going on here? SHE is my

girlfriend!” He did not say a word at that

moment.

The night he asked Jane agitatedly

how she knew Allen and why Dr. Norton

kept talking with her. Jane answered with

laughing and told him that Dr. Norton was

her father and Allen was her younger

brother. He had been studying in England

since he graduated from junior high and

he came back just now to see his sister and

father.

Knowing the truth,

Sam was more relaxed,

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but the other hand he also felt nervous that

Jane was the daughter of his boss. He

suddenly felt very uncomfortable and

thought in mind, ”I am going to merry to

the daughter of the boss. How would other

people think? They maybe think that

Sam marries Jane because of her father’s

money. No way!” Sam did not know how

to solve this situation and he really loved

Jane.

29

Chapter 6－Marriage of Sam

Three days after Sam discovered this

truth, the boss asked Sam to have a talk

with him. Obviously, Jane had told her

father, his boss about their love and their

marriage. “I know you really love Jane. I

can see in her eyes the happiness of

marrying you. Forget other people’s

thoughts about your marriage. The most

important thing is your true love. Further

more I hope you can give her a better life.

You two can happily hold each other’s

hand and walk together in the rest of

your life,” said Dr. Norton. Sam thanked

Dr. Norton and cheerfully called Jane to

tell her that they were really getting

married.

In the holiday, Sam went back to his

hometown with Jane to

tell his family about this

brilliant good news.

Mother Julie said to this new couple,

“Now I look at you just like the time

before I and Joy were getting married. I

am so happy for you, and for myself. I can

watch my boy getting married before I

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leave. This is the most wonderful thing in

the world. Thanks God.”

In the springtime of 2030, the

wedding of Sam and Jane took place.

Everybody has his/ her smile on the face

and all the things looked so beautiful and

joyful. All Sam’s friends came to attend

his wedding. Fannie now was a

psychologist, and also a doctor; Gerry was

an archaeologist who worked in China;

Francois was a famous teacher in America

who was popular among high school girls.

Sam was happy to see

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his old friends again and got a beautiful

wife.

They happily lived together and there

seemed no troubles in their life forever.

Unfortunately, their first baby was dead in

his mother’s womb. They were miserably

sad until successfully their twin babies

were born later.

Chapter 7－The End of Sam

Time flies. Today is

the 20th anniversary of

Sam and Jane’s marriage,

and today is also Sam’s birthday.

Everybody are invited to have a party in

Sam’s house. His son grew up, and he is

sure to be the most handsome and kind

boy in the town. The most beautiful girl

no doubt is Sam’s daughter, Susan, and

she looks like the younger one of her

mother. Every thing is going fine. It is also

the happiest point of Sam’s whole life. He

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is the owner of the Norton Computer

Company after Jane’s father died in 2039.

Sam’s mother also died two years after

Jane’s father died. Sam is thinking back of

his life in the armchair in his study room.

“My life was full of a lot of accidents

in it. They happened unexpectedly.

Sometimes I feel shocked and surprised;

sometimes I couldn’t accept it, like my

father and mother’s death, even my first

child’s death. How could I go through

these bad days? It is because of the words

that mom told me when father died. “It is

35

the routine of life, and death is the

destination of it.” Sam thought for a while,

“The death should be a destination? Can’t

it be the beginning? Maybe they really

stand there waiting for us and we will

meet each other one day then have a

whole new life.” While thinking, he feels

very comfortable and falls asleep.

In his dream, there are a lot of events

which had happened in life: his birth,

grandma’s death, Sue’s birth, father’s

death, then children’s birth, Jane’s father’s

death, and mom’s death… All the good

time, the bad time of it, they are all passed

now and Sam felt peaceful.

Maybe sometimes when we are

getting older, we sit in a comfortable

armchair and think back the time in our

life. There are a lot of people we meet, but

maybe they are not still there just by our

sides. They are always right there in our

heart to look at us and encourage us to

continue walking on.

36

Chapter 8－What I think about Sam

“Sam’s Walking Tour”, I think not

only Sam but also everybody’s walking

tour. Some people’s life is short, maybe

twenty years, ten year or even one year.

There are lots of people we meet in our

lives, including parents, grandparents,

brothers, sisters, friends, classmates,

coworkers, lovers, husband/wife, sons,

daughters, relatives, neighbors and

strangers. Some of

them are maybe still

by our sides and

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taking care of us but we could not always

see them. However, some of them would

leave us and disappear from the earth. In

fact, all these people we meet would all

stay right there and watch us continuing to

go on our lives.

Then, maybe one day, it is your turn

to leave. Do not be sad! What you should

do is smiling and it is your turn to stay

there watching others continuing their

own lives. Maybe I say it in a very easy

way, but it is a kind of hard to do. When

all these events happen, for example

someone died or someone is born, the

processes contain a lot of crying and

laughing. They all could be the touching

and happy ones or the heartbroken and

miserable ones.

I wrote this book about Sam’s life,

which contains some stories that happened

on him, maybe would make you laugh and

maybe would make you cry. They are

about love between families, friends and

lovers. Is the story

touching you? Maybe I

did not write a good

39

story, but I try really hard. Thanks for your

appreciation of “Sam’s Walking Tour”.

Thank you.

The last sentence I want to remind

you is — I could not know what the end

of Sam’s story or your story is, because

the lives are continuing unaware and it

means

“Endless and Everlasting”

40

Synopsis

This book is about Sam’s life, which

contains some stories that happened on

him, maybe would make you laugh and

maybe would make you cry. They are

about love between families, friends and

lovers.

I could not know what the end of

Sam’s story or your story is, because

the lives are continuing unaware and it

means “Endless and Everlasting.”