The Adventures of Sammy Rabbit Chapter 1: Indroduction

When I was a little girl, my grandmother would entertain us with stories. These stories were always different and always entertaining. Of course they had to be. They were, after all, designed to keep us kids occupied for just 5 more minutes. Let's start from the beginning. When my Grandmother was raising of her children, they lived in San Diego, California. Their home was on a hill with a U shaped driveway. My uncle Mike was around 3 or 4 at the time. He liked to play outside in the driveway with any kind of ball. This particular day he had a basketball. Naturally, the road was right there at the end of the driveway. His runaway ball went down the hill and across the street before stopping in the grass on the other side of the hill. My uncle was concentrating so hard on getting the ball back, that he would head after it full speed ahead. My grandmother darted outside frantically to catch little Michael before he ran into the street. She managed to catch up to him. She knelt down to explain to him how dangerous running out into the street was. In the corner of her eye, she spotted a squished rabbit. I'm sure my Grandmother, as creative as she was, decided to use this poor squished rabbit to teach my young uncle a very important lesson. She said to him, "Oh no, it's Sammy the rabbit! What happened to him? Why is he here in the street? He must have run into the road without looking first for cars! Poor Sammy!" My uncle was devastated as this was his first encounter with a dead rabbit in the road. She saw the effect it had on him and thus the legend of Sammy was born. This particular story teaches how you should be cautious before going in to the road and looking both ways, up and down the street before crossing. Sammy taught my Uncle Mike many other valuable lessons; such as blowing bubbles with bubble gum so big they whisk you up into the air and you float away, what to do when you take trips to the carnival, the park, or other places of entertainment, train and airplane rides, natural disasters, etc. She discovered years later that her grandchildren enjoyed these zany stories as well.  The problem was every time she told the stories they would be just a tad different. There are many children and grandchildren in my family. The stories and versions of those stories are endless. But they are entertaining. Let's see what Sammy has to teach us next.