The sign above (“Museum of Origami Snakes”) is not just a facade. Sam has made 40 or 50 origami snakes, and is willing to show them during visiting hours.

Whenever I see the sign, I smile. This is not a small thing. Connecting positively with Sam remains a challenge.

His art is a good example of this. Sam is a fearless artist, diving into drawings and cardboard-and-tape sculptures with a vision of a product and a flexibility in getting to that product. I admire this approach! I don’t especially relate to the specifics, though; I’m more of a word guy. My little creative experiments mostly involve text.

Can I nonetheless engage with Sam via his interest in and talent with visual media?

Last week, due to unique circumstances, we wound up in the garage with a set of five different cardboard and paper robots that Sam had made by hand. When Sam instructed me to hide them, I belatedly noticed the impressive range of morphologies. One was squat and crab-like and black, and blended in well with a bicycle’s back wheel. Another was quite lanky and seemed at home peering out of a tall cardboard box. I genuinely enjoyed the challenge of finding a suitable hiding spot for each one, and Sam appeared to enjoy finding them.

Still ahead: transferring the success of the garage robot hide-and-seek to situations where we are not hanging out with the robots and/or are not in the garage.

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