When Tom steals jam from his aunt I understand what his thought process is. It would be like, “I want to eat this, but my aunt won’t let my eat the amount I want, and if I get the amount I want it will basically be worthless, so I’ll try to sneak it.” “Well, I know. It’s jam—that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you,” (passage from Aunt Polly). I am the exact same way with ice cream. I always have to scout out what the situation is upstairs, whether my mom or dad is up there. If my dad is up there it would be fine, but if it were my mom I would have to be a lot more careful about how I would go about my mission. Even if my dad was up there I would have to be very subtle about how I got my ice cream. Either by talking to him, or by taking a lot less time getting the ice cream out of the tub, and into the bowl, so I can rush back downstairs before anyone notices how much I’ve taken. I normally wait until everyone has gone upstairs to get my ice cream that is my very short window of time, and I have to go full ninja mode. I have to be quiet, yet efficient. I have to scoop as much ice cream as I can before my mom or dad comes back downstairs for some random reason. After that I can enjoy my ice cream, and watch some TV.

The second similarity between me and Tom Sawyer is that I actually have played hookey before. “Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time.” In second grade I didn’t really feel like going to school, so I pulled the classic “I don’t feel well” trick. Surprisingly enough, I got away with it, but little did I know my mom set up a doctors appointment to see what I had. That scared me, because I wasn’t actually sick, and I couldn’t back out now because I would get into even more trouble, so I decided to keep the act up. Once I went through all the tests at the doctors office he said, “Well, it turns out you have strep throat.” In my head I was like “WHAT?! I CAN MISS EVEN MORE SCHOOL!!!” This was a huge win-win for me because didn’t get caught, I got to miss more school, and the strep throat didn’t even hurt that much. However, this was back in a time where I didn’t do much in school, and it didn’t really matter if you missed a couple of days, so I wouldn’t do this now because I would be screwed if I missed a day. Anyway, those are a couple of ways of how me and Tom Sawyer are alike.

Credit to Hager the Horrible for the comic:

http://hagarthehorrible.com/comic_tag/something-in-common/