Sam.

After a bit of thought, I feel the need to preface this post by saying that I think that Samuel Burns Collins is absolutely fantastic. His charm and wit draw you to him along with his sweet nature and akward, but loving, attitude towards others.

I have this friend. His name is Sam. Sam is an interesting character. He is a bit younger than me. He attends Samford in Birmingham, Alabama where he makes incredible grades and had a 4.0 Spring semester. Whatever. My point is that he is brilliant, in a creative way, and he knows it. He has a fanciful imagination and uses words like "fanciful", "endearing", and "little one" in everyday conversation. He also ends his sentences with an upward inflection, making him sound not only pretentious, but a tad bit British as well.

Sam and I like to compare everything and everyone to books that we have read, our favorite being "Pride and Prejudice." Sam likes to talk about theology and try to get me riled up (which works most of the time). We like to cook, read, listen to music, talk about pretty much everything, and go for rides in Isabel (the jeep).

A characteristic to be noted in regards to Sam is his ability to dig himself out of the seemingly bottomless holes in which he gleefully throws himself into on a regular basis. Last night, for instance, we were cleaning the kitchen after my scrumptious meal of authentic Mexican food (made authentic by the fact that a real Mexican made it) and we were having a fairly typical Sam and Theresa conversation. We start talking about one of our favorite people, Allison Ross, and I say that I feel like she and I are fairly similar. Sam says "Sometimes. But she's smarter." Ummm. Excuse me? I give him a blank stare, followed by the infamous (somewhat annoying) shriek that, this time, contained the name "Sam" and of course followed the shriek with a well deserved slap on the arm. Sam begins to stutter and backtrack and started comparing himself to Bob Ross (Allison's husband) and stated that Dr. Ross was smarter than himself. This comment was followed by "But, I'm wittier." He rambled on about book reviews and the fact that he would choose mine over Ms. Allison's because mine "would be wittier and would be churned out in five minutes", but that if asked who understood the book better, he would have to say Allison. Seriously? Really? At this point, I am beginning to wonder why we are even friends, but it got better. As he continued to talk about book smarts and school and who is smarter than who, he adds this little kicker "I mean, come on T, you don't do intelligent." I'm sorry, he said what? Yes. That's right apparently, "T" doesn't "do" intelligent. Upon seeing the look of wonder on my face, he again begins to backtrack saying how creative and "witty" I am. Why he thinks saying "witty" five million times will make it better, I have no idea. He continues to praise my "wittiness" and says that I would be most likely to own a paper or magazine (how this has anything to do with being "witty" is beyond me). At this point, I am laughing uncontrollably at the absolute absurdity of the entire conversation. Sam has acquired a sly grin, knowing full well he is off the hook. I congratulated Sam on the saving of his scrawny behind through roundabout reasoning and looks of helplessness.

The above account is a shining example of my relationship with Sam. I am fully aware that Sam will probably read this and I'm OK with that. I've said everything that I have written to his face. So, here's to Sam and the ridiculousness, the charm, the wittiness, and the sheer hilarity that he embodies. He's a pretty swell guy.