Sam Miller Comedy

It's 10:15 p.m..

I'm at a place called Smith Rock outside of Madras. I can see its shape silhouetted against the dark blue, dark gray sky. I'm waiting for the sun to go all the way down. I want the dull light to disappear so I can look at the stars. I want to soak them up before I drive back to Olympia. There's a lot of amazing things about Olympia, but it is in the I-5 Corridor and even on a clear night you can't see the stars that well.

I could have left right after the show and probably made it home by 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. and I'm kind of wishing I did. Instead, I'll go to my hotel and I'll watch a documentary until I fall asleep. I'll get an early start. Make it home before noon for sure. It's weird when you have a job where you work weekends and you sleep in other beds that aren't your own. And When you come back on a Monday at noon everybody else's week has already started. My kids being on summer break, they'll probably just be rolling out of bed. I stopped at a grocery store somewhere between Medford, Oregon and Crater Lake and got them these 5 ft long tubes of sour sugar. I've gotten them sour sugar tubes before, but never at this length.

I wonder how many times I've done this now, where I leave them for three, or seven, or ten days. I buy them little things. As I'm buying them I picture their face when they see them. I can hear them laugh.

I leave and then I come back. They know I'm coming back. I don't know what it's like to have a dad like me. My dad was around all the time, until I turned 12. My father had a cough, it turned into a bad cough, it wound up being mesothelioma. And he was gone.

All the kids at my school knew that he died. I was a weird kid and I got made fun of a lot. It felt really good when I came back to school and everybody was nice to me. I made up stories all the time, and one of the stories I made up was that my dad was actually a spy and he was deep undercover and that he was going to return from his secret mission eventually. I told so many people that story. Looking back, I imagine they probably felt pretty bad for me. I think I loved telling people that story because I wanted it to be true. I still wish it was true.

My wife Brittny and my mom do a good job with the kids while I'm gone. My kids aren't alone and they know I'm coming back. And usually when I get back we do something really fun.

I'm jealous. When I'm gone and I'm on the road they have each other. All I got is a hotel room, a CPAP and this rock that I can't really see because it's too dark. But I know it's there. And come tomorrow I'll be there too.