Part 1: Babies Aren't Really Very Interesting

"If you notice exhaust flames inside your luggage or other forms of your child, stay seated with alcohol and press the accelerator pedal to move unexpectedly side to side."
-Markov Bot Ford Focus Manual (as read during Desert Bus for Hope 10)


This is the story of a girl named Sammi Pyle. You may find this story unsatisfactory. But it really virtually almost happened, practically word for word (give or take a sentence here and there). If you don't like it, perhaps you should try having a story of your own, and tell it later once it has happened (or even if it merely almost sort of possibly might have happened) if that would satisfy you better.

Sammi's story begins with tragedy, as a great many stories do. The tragedy of an ugly rug, which is somewhat less common.

That is, of course, a complete fabrication. The part about beginning with the rug, that is. Sammi's story actually begins in a small house on the outskirts of a very dense city called Bridgeport, which also happens to have a lot of very dense people living in it. She was not born in this house, nor even on the side of the bridge after which the usually sun-deprived city was named where this house sat. In fact, Sammi would spend the majority of the relevant part of her life on the other side of that bridge.

So what relevance could this little house Sammi never saw on the side of a bridge she never lived on have to Sammi's life?

Well... that's where the tragedy begins. And so too does our story...


Destiny is not something we get to choose, it is a thing which chooses us.

In the case of Sammi Pyle, destiny started throwing her curve-balls before she was even born. Griselda Pyle (Sammi's mother) didn't like children, and she didn't like art. She also didn't like work, cheap wine or city council member Jeffrey Cook. Really, it is much easier to describe the things which Griselda did like than the things she didn't. Specifically, she liked dumpster diving, visiting the local bar, admiring herself in the mirror, and daydreaming about becoming senselessly rich someday.

Douglas Pyle (Sammi's father) did love children, so much so that it was often suggested the man was himself secretly a child, and he did want a child. Thus, Sammi was conceived. Unfortunately, while Sammi's father enjoyed work and it was his life's dream to become an astronaut, Griselda was more interested in the llama mascot who came visiting one day while Douglas was out. Douglas returned home after signing up for the army to find Griselda making out with the college mascot.

As one might expect, Douglas was not exactly on board with this activity of his wife's, and he accused her of cheating. Both the aforementioned making out and the accusation which followed had a great deal to do with the untidy demise of their relationship.

Griselda moved out shortly thereafter, taking her naughty reputation with her on the road, and offending countless people along the way. Douglas stayed where he was, and that is -for the most part- the extent of his involvement in Sammi's life. What happened to him after Griselda left has been a subject of much debate. Did he succeed in becoming an astronaut? Did he remarry? Did he get kidnapped by aliens? Or did he merely eat jelly beans off a tree until he died? If one were to ask the Orb of Answers, they would get a busy signal or a recorded message about how the Orb was presently feeling, and that probably says quite a bit more about the fate of Douglas Pyle than anything else.

This is not a story about Douglas Pyle. It isn't really a story about Griselda Pyle either, but -to understand Sammi's life- one must know a bit about Griselda. Also, quite a lot of Sammi's early life was incredibly dull, and time was better spent documenting the behaviors of her mother than watching Sammi make little cooing sounds for no apparent reason and occasionally scream at 2AM because infants think that is an appropriate hour to have their breakfast.

It's possible Griselda never planned anything in her life. In any case, the only apartment Griselda during her pregnancy could afford was shamelessly cheap. It had a perpetually broken shower which only had two settings (ice cold and spraying water everywhere like it had aspirations of becoming a park fountain), and a treacherous stove that would eventually catch fire and cause the demise of several defenseless counters and an ugly brown rug.

It is necessary to understand that fire can start almost anywhere, any time, but it most favors beginning inside of stoves and scraptronic workbenches. Fire, left unchecked, is incredibly destructive and potentially lethal. The aforementioned future fire in Griselda's shabby brown-toned apartment would not be the last to affect Sammi's future. It was but the first in a succession of them, even though it was scheduled to occur prior to Sammi's birth. Of course, scheduling has to make room for reality, and the stove was a little late in ruining the ugly rug and counters. Just remember for later how important fire is, and never walk into a kitchen if it is entirely consumed by flames unless you are a firefighter.

The apartment was better than living far from the city, and certainly better than an empty lot, so Griselda made do. Besides, there was a mirror in the bathroom, so she could fulfill her favorite pastime by looking at herself in the mirror and admiring the rather heavy, dark eye makeup she loved.

Griselda spent most of her pregnancy rummaging through the dumpster behind a lounge she was not rich or famous enough to actually enter (except to use the bathroom, which she frequently did use because -though she loved rummaging- Griselda found trash disgusting). It was during one such dive that Griselda found and brought home the rug which was later to be finally put out of its misery and eventually laid to rest after being obliterated by the treacherous stove.

Even at the time she was rummaging behind the fancy lounge, Griselda had dreams of moving closer to a bar she would actually be allowed to see the inside of. She badly wanted some onion rings, and occasionally had dreams about them, when she wasn't dreaming about large piles of money. Griselda liked onion rings. She also liked the greasy food truck which usually parked near her favorite dumpster. Even if the lounge bouncers wouldn't let her in, Griselda never wanted for food with that truck nearby. Except that she really wanted some nice bar food. Or even some bad bar food. Truthfully speaking, she just wanted bar food.

Unfortunately she was virtually penniless, and it wasn't long before the repo-man was threatening to confiscate her rug. It somehow seemed unlikely that locking the door and ignoring him would help. Griselda had also heard a rumor that the repo-man was capable of feats that were... unnatural and that he could actually teleport at will to any location he wished. Griselda contemplated killing him with the unholy fly horde gathering on the dirty plates in her kitchen, but it was well known that the repo-van was like a clown car and repo-men traveled in great packs just like their less dangerous distant third or fourth cousins a couple of times removed, the gem hunting werewolves. There was no escape except to pay the bills. Griselda was terrified for her rug, and rummaged as she had never rummaged before.

She found the cure for her woes in the very bottom of the dumpster after she'd been digging all day, finding nothing but worthless roaches and a weird looking moth. What she found at last in the very bottom of the dumpster (where all of the best items eventually settled) was the most gorgeous television set she had ever seen. It took her a moment to grasp the reality of her find, and her joy was momentarily overshadowed by the trial of actually getting such a large, cumbersome object out of the dumpster.

It was a massive thirty-six inch plasma screen, the biggest she'd ever seen. With this television, she would finally be able to read the tiny print they used for recipes on the cooking channel, and see what those little seeds on the gardening channel looked like so she could recognize them for herself if she ever saw them. Of course, she didn't have a yard to garden in, and the stove allowed for little experimentation food-wise, but the lure of crystal clear picture was significant. She was certain the picture speakers in this TV were so good they wouldn't even induce a migraine if she watched more than half an hour of her favorite soap opera, Romantic Rendezvous.

All the way home, Griselda tried to figure out what she could sell that would allow her to keep the television. As she wracked her brains, it became clear that this television was worth more than every item she owned, even all put together. That was a bit disappointing.

It was just after dawn when Griselda finally managed to lug it the half mile to her house, cram it into the rickety elevator and make it up to the fifth floor. By then she was starving, so she decided to take a break and cook some waffles. This was a mistake.

Griselda hurriedly mixed the batter up for waffles. She ignored the green slime on the counter which was gradually becoming sentient because it had been allowed to flourish for so long as she swiftly transformed the batter mix in the bowl into little squares with neat syrup holding indentations and laid each waffle in the pan using nothing but a large wooden spoon. Flinging the pan into the oven, she railed against the universe because she was so hungry. She swayed slightly because she needed sleep. But nodding off and starving to death wasn't the cause of her downfall. That came in the form of labor pains and a frantic taxi ride to the hospital. Douglas may have been there but, if he was, he did not come home with Griselda (or if he did, she did not invite him into the apartment).

The stove continued to cook the waffles while Griselda had her first contractions. Warning smoke curled around the sides of the stove door as she began to scream at the doctors and nurses. An ominous flicker of orange danced behind the tempered glass while she told them about a beautiful television and how deeply terrified of the repo-man she was. As little Sammi first opened her bright eyes and looked into her mother's lovely face, the kitchen burst into flames.

The apartment building owner was wise enough to have a fire alarm installed, but the slow and perilous elevator ride delayed firefighters attempting to reach the kitchen, and it had been almost entirely engulfed in flames by the time they arrived. The stove, counters and ugly brown rug were history, but the precious television set was safe. The waffles, however, were ruined.

Arriving home to the smoked out kitchen and a fireman's lecture, Griselda knew that the television -no matter how desirable- had to go.

And so too had the apartment, as it was clearly a firetrap.


Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. This was written for my entertainment, and is being published for yours. If you find yourself not enjoying it, then you should feel perfectly free to stop reading. Do feel free to point out typos; I check my stories before publishing, but I admit my imperfection and would welcome the opportunity to correct any mistakes I may have made.

Special thanks (or blame) for this goes to the friend and sister-in-law who got me into Sims (first 2 and then 3) in the first place, my brother (who does not play Sims) and to the long suffering writer friend who -despite not playing Sims or understanding most of the references I made- was willing to give opinions on the various ideas I threw at her like water balloons.

Nobody panic, everything is fine. I merely have no idea what I'm doing. I hope you enjoy whatever this has turned out to be.