Meet Spotlight Sam: The Mind That Wanders

Meet Spotlight Sam: The Mind That Wanders

The morning sun poked its golden fingers through the curtains of Sam's bedroom, painting warm stripes across the rumpled bedsheets. Sam was already awake—or rather, had been awake for quite some time. The trouble was, Sam had been awake thinking about so many wonderful things that getting out of bed had become quite impossible.

"What if velociraptors weren't really covered in feathers?" Sam wondered aloud, staring at the ceiling where glow-in-the-dark stars formed a lopsided constellation. "What would that mean for how we understand their behavior? And if they were warm-blooded, did they maybe have a harder time surviving than we thought?"

These were questions that most seven-year-olds probably didn't ponder while brushing their teeth, but Sam did. Sam wondered about everything. Why is the sky blue? How do ants know where to carry their little pieces of leaf? What happens when you mix red and blue paint—does it really make purple, or does it make something entirely new that nobody has ever seen before?

The truth was, Sam's mind was like a curious puppy that couldn't decide which smell to follow. One moment it was sniffing around in the garden of dinosaurs, and the next it was bounding off toward the mysterious lands of outer space. Just then, as Sam lay there contemplating whether aliens might prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla, the puppy mind caught a new scent entirely.

Cookies!

The smell of freshly baked cookies drifted up from the kitchen downstairs. Sam's grandmother was visiting, and she made the most magnificent chocolate chip cookies in the entire universe. Or at least, in the entire neighborhood. Sam's stomach made a growling sound that could probably be heard in the next county.

"Time for breakfast, Sam!" called a voice from below. "Your oatmeal is getting cold!"

Sam bounded out of bed with the energy of a thousand rubber bands being released at once. The journey downstairs was an adventure in itself—three steps down, pause to look at the weird stain on the wall that looked like a rabbit, two more steps, pause to wave at Mr. Whiskers the neighbor's cat sitting on the fence, one more step, pause to wonder if cats dream about chasing laser pointers in their sleep.

"Samantha! Sam!" came the voice again, more insistent this time. "Your oatmeal is transforming into cement as we speak!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Sam called back, finally reaching the kitchen where Grandmother stood by the stove, wearing her favorite apron with the little dancing carrots on it.

Grandmother looked at Sam with that special kind of loving exasperation that grandmothers have perfected over centuries of practice. Sam's hair was sticking up in seventeen different directions, one sock was on inside out, and there was a suspicious smear of peanut butter on the elbow of the wrong arm.

"Did you remember to brush your teeth this morning?" Grandmother asked, though from the look on her face, she already suspected she knew the answer.

"I was going to," Sam began, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table, "but then I started thinking about teeth and how they're the only part of the body that can't heal itself, which is really strange when you think about it, because our bodies can fix cuts and broken bones and all sorts of things, but teeth just have to stay broken forever unless you go to the dentist, and speaking of dentists, did you know that ancient Romans used to—"

"Sam," Grandmother interrupted gently, setting a bowl of oatmeal in front of her grandchild. The oatmeal was indeed looking somewhat congealed, but it was still edible. Probably. "Maybe we could save some thoughts for after breakfast?"

Sam nodded solemnly, understanding the gravity of the situation. Oatmeal waited for no one, not even for the most fascinating thoughts in the history of the universe. "You're right, Grandmother. Breakfast first. Thoughts later."

"That's my Sam," Grandmother smiled, though there was a hint of worry mixed in with the warmth. She had noticed something that Sam hadn't—not yet, anyway. Sam's teacher, Mrs. Patterson, had called last week to discuss some concerns. Sam was bright, incredibly bright, the kind of bright that made teachers do double-takes and do a quick mental review of whether they'd actually learned all this stuff in teacher training college. But Sam also seemed to exist in a world of perpetual motion, a world where attention was a bouncing ball that never stayed in one place for long.

The trouble was, school had started requiring more than just knowing things. It required *showing* what you knew. It required sitting still. It required following instructions. And those were things that Sam found extraordinarily difficult.

After breakfast, it was time for the morning routine: teeth brushing (completed successfully this time), face washing (mostly completed, though a small spot behind the left ear was missed), and the gathering of the backpack. This last part was where things tended to get complicated.

Sam's backpack lived by the front door, and it was supposed to contain everything needed for a successful day of learning. But today, like most days, the backpack had become a museum of interesting objects that Sam had collected during various mental adventures. There was a rock that looked like a dragon's tooth. There was a stick that was perfectly Y-shaped, ideal for any number of adventures. There was a crumpled drawing of a spaceship that Sam had designed during a particularly long car ride. And somewhere in the depths of the backpack was the math homework, though whether it was today's math homework or last week's math homework remained to be seen.

"Sam, did you remember to pack your spelling words? We practiced those yesterday," Grandmother reminded from the kitchen, where she was cleaning up breakfast.

Spelling words! Yes, Sam had definitely studied those. Sam could remember studying them, which meant they were definitely in the backpack. Or were they? Now that Sam thought about it, there was a possibility that the spelling words had been traded to a classmate for that interesting bottle cap, or that they had been used as bookmarks in a library book, or that they had simply walked away on their own because that's what loose papers liked to do in Sam's experience.

"I'll just check," Sam called back, rummaging through the backpack with increasing urgency.

This, Grandmother thought to herself as she dried a plate, was going to be one of those days. But perhaps that was okay. Sam's heart was in the right place, even if the spelling words weren't.

Meanwhile, as Grandmother finished the dishes and Sam conducted the increasingly frantic backpack excavation, something unusual was happening outside. In the old oak tree that stood at the edge of Sam's backyard, something had awakened. Something very, very old.

Professor Concentro was not his real name, of course. His real name was a long series of hoots and whistles that human ears couldn't possibly interpret, but he had adopted the human name because he had been studying humans for so many centuries that it seemed only polite. He was an owl, but not just any owl. He was the oldest owl in the entire Whispering Woods, and possibly in the entire world.

He had wings the color of autumn leaves, with patterns that shifted and changed depending on the light. His eyes were the most extraordinary shade of purple, and they seemed to hold within them the secrets of every thought ever concentrated upon. You see, Professor Concentro had a special talent—a talent he had spent his entire very long life studying and perfecting. He could see focus itself. He could see when a mind was sharp as a needle and when it was scattered like autumn leaves in the wind. And he had been watching young Sam for quite some time now.

"The child is brilliant," he muttered to himself, adjusting his small round glasses (a gift from a human philosopher he'd befriended in the sixteenth centur