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
3
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,
4
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.
6
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
7
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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10
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
14
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.
17
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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19
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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23
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.
24
25
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
30
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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32
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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34
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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38
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.”
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