Ham by Sam Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

silently, staring straight ahead, never speaking of it again.
    I didn’t care if I ever played baseball, but I think it killed my father that day. While he had never been the kind of dad who tossed a ball or practiced batting with me, this moment was not about athletic preparedness. It signified that he wasn’t the only one who knew I was different. Odd. Not like the others. The secret was out. I don’t think he ever blamed me. He was just sad and disappointed, afraid that if I wasn’t like him, my life would be hard and lonely. He saw how the misfits were treated and he didn’t want that for his son.
    Suck it up, Dad, I’m in show business.
    A few days after the Little League tryouts, my father called out my name, hoisted himself forward from his La-Z-Boy, turned down the TV, and put on a record of classical music. He asked me to close my eyes.
    â€œWhat do you see?” he said.
    I listened and concentrated and let the music create a picture in my mind. “There is a graveyard. And it’s cold and windy . . . and foggy. And there are old headstones.”
    The music changed. “What else?” he asked.
    â€œNow there are skeletons dancing around the cemetery. They’re celebrating a new dead person. They’re flying around. The dead person is alive again with them.”
    Rather than attaching a story to the music, it was as if I was making the music happen! By the time the symphony ended, I was enthralled. I understood that music came from intention and not the other way around. I could escape to anywhere I dreamed. I could create my own world. With underscoring.
    I was the muddled concoction of my father’s contradictions. The same man who warned me that “life is a bowl-a shit” was the channel to my bliss. The infection and the cure. He was, at once, the drought that left me parched and gasping, and the rain that nurtured the single blade of grass, pushing itself up from between the jagged cracks in the sidewalk, and into the sun.

5. The Zoo Story
    My four-year-old son, Cooper, and I have little in common.
    When he was born, I was the primary caretaker. It was a natural role for me, and Cooper and I had an immediate, primordial bond. I was scheduler and night feeder, burper, soother, then organic baby food maker, onesie stocker, BPA-PVC-phthalate-free checker, lead tester, baby proofer. Toppling stacks of baby books, each over a foot high, were piled on and around my nightstand and, though previously a voracious reader of fiction and biographies, I did not open a single nonbaby book—all highlighted, underlined, and dog-eared—for nearly two years.
    Danny was head-over-heels in love and couldn’t get enough of our son, but as he bounced the lumpy lox of a do-nothing infant who just ate and pooped and gurgled and spit, I could tell he was eager to get past this stage so they could climb trees and play catch and destroy things. When Cooper took his first wobbly steps, Danny immediately wanted to take him Rollerblading. I kept saying, “Don’t worry, there will come a day before we know it where it’s all about you guys.”
    Call me clairvoyant. As Cooper has grown into a full-on little boy, I may remain the go-to guy for meals, boo-boos, permission, daily organization, midnight fevers, developmental research, hard-ass rules, and “feelings,” but now, well, Danny trumps all. His time has come. He is the fun one. He is goofy and crazy and Cooper laughs a particular sound of pure joy that is exclusive to Papa, which is what he calls Danny. I’m Daddy. Daddy is fun, but not that kind of fun.
    I go with Cooper’s lead and we have a great time, but I have found myself searching for activities that interest us both. It’s hard. Very hard. I get bored. Very bored. Not with him, but with what captivates him. We sip from different sippy cups of tea.
    Cooper loves cars, jets, monster trucks, and motorcycles. All the