All About Sam by Lois Lowry

her. She was in the big studio where she painted, and she was working at her easel, humming and holding a paintbrush with a blue-daubed end in her hand.
    "Hi, Sam," she said. "What's up?"
    "Do you know how to make big muscles on someone?"
    "Well," said Sam's mom, "if I were making a picture of a person, and wanted to make big muscles, I would do it like this." She pulled out a large sheet of paper, drew a man very quickly with a marking pen, and then added a fat bulge on each of his arms. "See?" she said. "Big muscles."
    Sam looked. The picture looked a little like Popeye.
    "Yeah," he said, "but if it was a real person, not just a
picture
person, how would he get big muscles? How did Popeye get his big muscles?"
    His mother laughed. "Spinach, of course. Don't you remember how Popeye gobbles spinach every time he needs more strength and bigger muscles?"
    Of
course.
Sam did remember.
    And he remembered something else. He remembered that there was some leftover spinach in the refrigerator.
    Sam didn't like leftover, cold spinach very much. But he went to the refrigerator anyway, took out the dish that held the spinach, and ate some.
    Yuck. It tasted awful.
    He checked his muscles. No change.
    Another big bite. YUCK.
    And he checked again. Still no muscles.
    Sam sighed and reached for the bowl of spinach one more time, just as the back door opened. His father was home.
    "What are you eating, Sam?" Daddy asked. He set his briefcase down, came over to the table where Sam was sitting, and peered into the bowl. "It looks like cold spinach."
    "It
is
cold spinach," Sam said with his mouth full.
    "Do you mind if I ask
why
you are eating something so disgusting? Especially when there's good stuff in the refrigerator, like—let's see—apples?"
    "I need big muscles," Sam said.
    "You do?" his daddy asked. "Why?"
    Sam thought about that. "If I had big muscles," he said at last, "Nicky would never ever bite me at school. And no monster would ever dare to come live in my closet. I could chase bad guys. And everybody would call me He-Man."
    "Well," his dad said, "I guess that's true. But why are you eating cold spinach?"
    "This is how Popeye gets his big muscles."
    Sam's daddy sat down. "I'd forgotten that, Sam, but you're right. That
is
how Popeye gets his muscles. And when I was a kid, I tried to get them the same way. But you know what?"
    "What?" Sam asked gloomily, reaching for another bite of yucko cold spinach.
    "It doesn't work for regular people, only for Popeye."
    "It doesn't?" Slowly Sam put the spinach back into the bowl.
    "Nope. I thought I'd better tell you before you gave yourself a spinach stomachache."
    "But how did you get your big muscles?"
    "Me? I don't have big muscles. I'm Mister Flabbo," said Sam's father. "Feel." He guided Sam's hand to the top of his arm, and Sam poked. Through his father's jacket, the arm felt pudgy and soft.
    "Anyway," his father said, "you don't want to be like Popeye. He wears terrible clothes."
    Sam thought about Popeye's clothes. "They're not so bad," he told his father. "He wears a sailor suit."
    "I happen to know, Sam, that your mother bought you a sailor suit. And you absolutely refused to wear it. Remember that day when you were supposed to go to a birthday party, and Mom tried to get you to wear the sai-"
    "Yeah," Sam muttered. It was a day he had tried to forget. He had behaved very badly. So, in Sam's opinion, had his mother.
    "And
another
thing about Popeye—" Sam's father went on. "I
know
you'll hate this!"
    "What?"
    "He smokes a pipe."
    "That's right!" Sam said. "Just like
you!
Even though Mom and Anastasia and I always always tell you to quit, and Anastasia brought home all those booklets from the American Long Sausage Nation."
    "American Lung Association," his father corrected him, with a guilty look. "And I
am
going to quit, I really am. Very, very soon. Probably next week. Or if not next week, the week after that, for
sure.
"
    Sam's daddy looked so unhappy that Sam reached