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Young Autistic boy struggling to find love in this hateful world

The character, Sam, is both on the search to find true love, and also still seeking how he could make it through the real world. He wants to find love but struggles because he doesn't act like other people.

It's not his fault, but people usually don't give it a chance, like how there was a redheaded girl that got really touchy on Sam and he thought things were going too fast. He didn't know if he truly wanted this or not yet but she didn't care. She didn't get any consent from him at all and didn't ask him if it's OK.

After Sam shoved the girl off the bed out of the way because he was uncomfortable, she said, "What is wrong with you? Seriously, are you retarded? Is there something wrong with your brain?" To which he looked physically hurt by this. He realized that he would never really fit in with most people.

This didn't stop him from still trying to find love though.

Once people get to know Sam, they realize how smart he is with all his facts about Antarctica and they see the real him. He finds this place really interesting and relatable.

This is why he's so obsessed with Antarctica, because "It's not what it looks like" which parallels him to society and how he acts.

He doesn't accept his true identity fully when he says, "Sometimes, I wish I was normal." to which Evan replies, "Well, dude... nobody's normal." It will most likely take Sam a while to accept the fact that he doesn't fit in albeit most people in the world can't fit in.

He is really passionate about finding love though.

Sam feels that finding someone who cares about him would really make him feel more "normal." He really does his research, but the wrong areas. He learns to belittle women, call them names, and make terrible puns to get them to notice him.

With these lessons in mind, he asks a girl about this, to which everyone started laughing at him and making fun. Sam finally learned the right way to talk to girls from both his therapist, and (ironically) a stripper he met.

He took on a practice girlfriend and went along with all of her rules and her changes to him. She even makes him lower the amount of Antarctica facts he says to three a day. He didn't like it but since he didn't know what love is he went with it.

He even tries this strategy on a different date (before the fake girlfriend) he got with but completely weirded her out. The first impression he made was him wearing noise canceling headphones she thought was strange but stayed strong and kept the date going. Next he did the steps of talking down to her and belittling the way she looks because that's what he learned to do. The date didn't go well whatsoever but he did learn right after to not do that.

He also still had feelings for his therapist Julia, so he asked his dad on tips for that. Doug (his dad) gave him the idea to give her chocolate covered strawberries to her house. When Sam was delivering the strawberries, he noticed the window open and decided to wander into her house to hand deliver the strawberries.

He unknowingly causes a fight between Julia and her boyfriend Miles.

Typically, people with similar behaviors to his spectrum don't date, but Sam defies these norms and spends most of his times looking for love.

His mom and sister are against him dating because they always want to be there to look out for him. They don't trust a random girl because Sam could get too attached and she might not be there when he needs her the most. This is problematic because they don't give the new girl a chance.

The girlfriend, Paige, proves that she's worthy when she pitches something called, the "Silent Dance" as a dance for kids with autism. They would give everyone headphones so they could listen at their own levels of comfort to not disrupt anyone.

This sounds like a really good idea because it brings together everyone regardless of ableism, race, or gender.

Even though this sounds like a nice, and easy school project that everyone would accept, a group of parents reject upon this. Elsa asks one of the parents why she voted nay on the vote and turns out they're all mad about Casey going to Clayton Prep.

Love is hard for the rest of the family too. The mom struggles to find love after her son is ready to leave and do things independently. She starts to have an identity crisis when her family no longer needs her. She resorts to cheating on her family with another, younger guy. They get so far that the guy thinks they're dating and even wants Elsa to be there to comfort him and not just for sex.

Sam's sister, Casey, at first isn't interested in love at all but changes to wanting someone she can actually put her trust into. She wants someone who wouldn't lie to her, unlike both of her parents.

At first she thought that Doug would never lie to her but her innocence was broken when she learned why he didn't go to one of the autism walks.

Casey realizes both of her parents have been lying to her for years. They never told her why Doug skipped the Autism walk until Sam told her why. Turns out he walked away from his family that year. Casey realized that her mom has been lying to the family when she saw Elsa and Nick kissing.

Doug only wants the family to stay happy and have no issues. He's always trying to connect with Sam and have some sort link to talk to him about. They found this connection when Sam wanted to know more about girls, so he asked him how he wooed over mom from the guy she was dating.

This in turn, caused Sam to try to woo over Julia from her boyfriend.

Doug at first felt ashamed of having an autistic kid and left the family for a little while. We see now that he is still ashamed when he doesn't tell his coworker friend of over five years that his son has autism.

The whole family has issues that they need to work on in order to truly be happy.

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Gotta smile through anything life throws at you

It's scary to move into a new world with people you've never seen before, but know that you're going to spend a long time of your life with them, and when one person that's supposed to guide you into your new life hates you with a passion. Kindergartner, Mike didn't know how to act in front of these new kids and knew that one slip up could mess up his future all up until college. He always enjoyed making people smile and laugh because this showed that he could be trusted, but for some reason a small group of  people hated seeing everyone else smile without him doing so. This group was referred to as the "Kings and Queens" of our grade since they basically ran how people act and who they hang out with. The teacher also didn't like it when the kids would smile without her permission because it means she wouldn't be in control of the class anymore. For the rest of kindergarten and up until middle school, the "Kings and Queens" would always be there to torment Mike and his friends.

In kindergarten, the teacher would always send Mike and his friend, Joe, to the principals office constantly. They wouldn't really be doing anything bad, but whatever happened, she didn't want to deal with it and would send them off to the principal's office.

As the next year rolled out, she got fired. No one knew why but we just assumed it's because she yells too much and made too many kids cry.

Over the years, the "Kings and Queens" got worse and worse. It started off as secluding Mike and Joe from most of the other kids in that grade, but over the years it turned into physical forms of torture. They would shove them down slides, punch them in the gut, and just gang up on them during recess when the teacher wasn't looking. This was more-so on Mike than Joe.

Mike didn't know why they hated him so much but he eventually found out why. They would always call him a "rejected Asian" and would make fun of him since he wasn't good at math or wasn't always studying and was off fooling around with Joe. They eventually learned the word gay and kept on using it on Joe and Mike.

There were times when Mike would come home all bloody and bruised and his mom would question why he looks so battered, to which he would respond by saying how the recess games would get intense or a kickball would hit his face or even the generic "I fell" excuse. Even through all this abuse and loneliness, Mike still smiled through the pain, trying to make everybody he can happy, even those who hurt him, because he was taught to try to look for the good in everybody. He saw their hatred towards him as a sign that they're in need of some kind of attention, and he was all up to take the bullet rather than anyone else.

Around fifth grade was the peak for the "Kings and Queens." Since fifth graders were already seen as the leaders of the school for surviving that long, they had no problem ordering around the lower grades. They got a lot stronger, smarter, and meaner. At this point they knew how to properly hurt someone.

Mike wasn't too good in math and sciences, and since this was supposed to be an Asian's typical strong-suit, this is what he was teased on the most. Around this time he started to agree with them that he truly was a "broken Asian." He started to feel ashamed that he couldn't match what his family could do at his age.

One time, they tried poisoning Mike because it would be funny. During lunchtime, Mike had to go to the bathroom after getting his food so he went and entrusted Joe to make sure nobody would eat or touch his food. When he left, the "Kings and Queens" wasted no time and went to Mike's lunch to mess with it. Joe tried to stop them but couldn't do a thing against the gang of people. They put several dollops of hand sanitizer gel in Mike's sandwich and spread it around to make it look almost identical to the real thing. Joe was forced to keep silent or else he would get what's coming for him. Every drop of hand sanitizer that came out hurt Joe, since he was told to protect one of Mike's treasures. He felt he was lying to Mike's face and that this would destroy him, as Joe is one of his only true friends. When Mike finally came back, he was glad to see his sandwich was somewhat unharmed and was happy that Joe protected it. Mike went for his sandwich and when he was about to take a bite, Joe couldn't stand it and screeched out at the top of his lungs of what happened. A teacher nearby heard and escorted Mike and two of the "Kings" to the principal's office. They were all three going to get in trouble but then the principal understood that kids will be kids and let them all free after apologizing to each other, even though Mike had nothing to do with the situation.

Torment like this lasted for the rest of fifth grade and the only thing keeping Mike going was the few smiles he received and the thought that middle school would be better than this. It wasn't.

The good news is that the old "Kings and Queens" forgot about Mike and Joe and moved on from picking on people and made friends with others like them. The bad news is that a new wave of bullying swept onto them like a huge tidal wave on an unsuspecting city, rebuilding from the one before. Mike likes to refer to them as the "Goons."

They didn't pick on the way Mike looks like how the "Kings and Queens" did in elementary school, but they were more physical and obnoxious. In the beginning they would bug Mike to borrow pencils and pens and never give them back, all the minor stuff. It started to escalate to pushing into lockers, belittling, and all the other painful stuff.

The worst part was when he started to fall for one of them. This one girl would pull at Mike's hair to the point it would bleed, or stab him hard enough with pencils to cause him to scar for the rest of his life, or scratch and bite him to when skin would come off. But through all this pain he still felt something towards her. He didn't know why, but he knew he wanted her. He was locked in a love daze.

It all ended in a couple years when she started to do drugs, ruin her life completely and almost fail out of highschool.

He made a lot of new friends though! People started to appreciate him more and laugh with him. Even through all this pain through Mike’s life, he is still happy the way it turned out, because he made people smile and that’s all that mattered to him. It doesn't matter to him if everyone else is smarter than him, he learned that he should accept himself the way he is, with a bunch of flaws.

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EAT UR GREENS

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