All About Sam Read Free Page A

mistake and it hurt. He tried not to do that. He tried to bite
other
people's fingers.
    And he bit toys. His teddy bear wasn't good biting, because it was too soft; but there was a hard plastic pretzel that he chewed on quite a bit. And the bars on the side of his crib were made of wood; he gnawed on them while they thought he was sleeping.
    Also when they thought he was asleep, he practiced talking. He liked to do it when no one was listening so they wouldn't laugh. "Ba, ba, ba," he practiced late at night, saying it quietly to himself in the dark.
    "Ta, ta, ta" was a good one. And "Ma, ma, ma."
    He could say "me, me, me" and "ho, ho, ho."
    He could do body parts. In the middle of the night, if he woke up and was bored, he kicked his blanket off, lifted his legs in the air, pointed with his finger, and said softly, "Knee, knee, knee." He had two of those.
    "Eye, eye, eye," he said and pointed. Ouch. He had two of those, too, but he had to be careful, pointing, because if he pointed too hard at his eyes, it hurt.
    When he worked hard at it, he could put two sounds together and make "Nose." He had only one nose, but it was fun to point at it, because sometimes he could poke his finger
into
it.
    Nobody knew that he was practicing talking. It was his secret. He was going to let them know when the right moment came.
    And in the meantime, he was working hard on some other stuff, too, at the other end of his body. Legs and feet, those things were called (he could say "feet" already, practicing at night). Feet also had toes—which he could say: "Tose, tose, tose"—but toes didn't seem very useful. They certainly weren't as handy as fingers, which could grab stuff, and pinch, and pull Anastasia's hair.
    But legs and feet were very useful because they could get you from here to there. Rolling did too, of course, but Sam had been rolling for quite a while now, and he was beginning to get bored with rolling. You couldn't aim yourself very well and sometimes you rolled into the coffee table by mistake and whacked your nose. And when you rolled, you often got a mouthful of rug by mistake.
    So he was practicing legs and feet. Using legs and feet, you could get yourself upright so that you looked like a real grown-up person. Once you were upright, like a grown-up, you never had to eat rug.

    Now, finally, on a Saturday morning, he was ready to give the thing a try in front of the whole family. They were in the living room, all of them. Dad was lying on the couch, reading a newspaper. He had his shoes and socks off, and his big bare feet were propped on the arm of the couch. Mom was sitting in the green chair, knitting. She knit a lot. Knitting looked like an interesting thing to do with fingers. Sometimes, when she wasn't looking, Sam rolled over to her basket of knitting stuff and tried to knit. But she always grabbed it away from him and said, "No, no, no."
No
was an easy word to say. Sam said it a lot to himself at night, practicing. Soon he would say it to his family. He planned to say it often.
    Anastasia was there, too. She was sitting on the floor barefoot, and she was painting her toenails bright red, using a tiny brush that went into a little bottle. A minute ago she had reached over very quietly and painted her father's biggest toenail bright red. He hadn't noticed yet.
    No one was paying any attention to Sam. He was sitting on the rug chewing on his plastic pretzel.
    Very quietly—just as stealthily as Anastasia had painted her dad's toenail—Sam put his pretzel down.
    He reached over and put both hands firmly on the edge of the coffee table. He raised himself to his knees. Knee, he told himself. Knee.
    Then he said—still to himself—foot. And he raised himself to one foot.
    And again: foot. And he was on the other foot. He pushed hard. Now he was upright, the way he sometimes was in his crib, holding the sides.
    That wasn't enough. He wanted to be upright on his own, like the grown-ups. So very carefully,