Oh, Sam…

Sam is, unfortunately, a little shy when it comes to dealing with adults in certain situations – a waiter asking him what he wants, a stranger asking him how he’s doing in school. He freezes a little, and if he can get the answer out, it’s often very quiet and sort of choked. This is sort of new; when he was a toddler and in preschool, he reveled in chatting with everybody, but as he’s gotten older, he’s become more withdrawn. We’ll try to prompt him, and we keep fingers crossed that he’ll grow back into his self-confidence.

Sometimes, it happens with other kids, too, if he’s caught by surprise. Today, while I was with him at his summer school (a tale of mishaps, that; the brief version is that his computer class got canceled, but the principal arranged to put him into a reading class at a level above his grade, so it’s fine), and a couple of kids passing in the hallways yelled, “Hey! I know you!” Sam froze, total deer-in-the-headlights. I prompted him with a whisper to smile and say hello, so he did, but it was glaringly obvious that he had no idea who these kids were. Undaunted, they pressed on. “You were at that festival with the bikes!” Sam’s smile slipped a little. “Yeah, you were doing all the tricks! I liked the frog-jumping one! I’m working on that one now!” And they waved madly as they kept going. Sam grinned a very sickly grin, nodded, and turned away.

“Um, Sam?” I said. “I’m pretty sure you don’t know them. I think they have you confused with somebody else.” He looked even more baffled. “I mean, can you do bicycle stunts? And have you ever performed them at a festival, for an audience?”

“No,” he said. “I can do a wheelie, though.” He looked back at the boys, confused. Poor kid; life’s tricky enough without being mistaken for Evel Knievel, especially when you lack the social skills to credibly deny it.