Samson

Seen on the Purple Line to Linden at about 8:20 a.m. 

Samson doesn’t usually feel his age, but his fingers seem stiff and heavy as he types the text message: “See you soon.” When did his hands get so wrinkled?

One of his coworkers, Samantha, is teaching him how to text. They send messages back and forth all day, and even at night sometimes. At first had trouble with it. The autocorrect infuriated him, and he could never remember how to find the punctuation marks or the numbers. But Samantha was always patient with him, and it paid off. He’s a lot better now. Faster, too.

Samantha’s not like other women her age, in Samson’s opinion. She’s twenty-something, but she doesn’t write any of those obnoxious abbreviated texts with acronyms that Samson can’t understand. She believes in grammar, she believes in syntax, she believes in punctuation. At the office, Samantha always smiles at him and says hello. They talk about their lives. Samantha tells him about her boyfriend and her dog and their new apartment. Samson tells her about his wife and what his kids are learning at school. More about the kids, obviously.

Samson thinks he might be in love with Samantha, but that’s okay. At his age, he’s learned to be content with what he has. He has a wife, and kids, and a home, and now he has text messages from Samantha. He never deletes them. 

I watched Lost in Translation last night with my roommate, and I think that inspired this story a lot. I also went to see Moonrise Kingdom last night with my friend Felipe. It was wonderful! Such a sweet story, and a perfect Summer movie. Wes Anderson's films are always good. I highly recommend it.

Our couchsurfers from San Francisco arrived last night! And you know what that means. Weekend adventures await...