“That Sam-I-Am. That Sam-I-Am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am.”
There is Sam-I-Am and then there is the other guy. He’s not named. In fact, not a whole lot is known about him. In fact, there are really only two things that can be said for sure. He doesn’t like Sam-I-Am and he doesn’t like green eggs and ham. Since the two things are inextricable, it is safe to assume—though one cannot be certain—that his lack of fondness for Sam-I-Am has something to do with his lack of fondness for green eggs and ham. Or, vice versa. It’s kind of a chicken/egg thing going on here.
“Do you like green eggs and ham?”
This is the question that sets the whole thing in motion. Sam-I-Am shows up with the offensively colored breakfast meal on a platter and asked the other guy if he likes them. The answer is very much to the negative, but said with great affirmation. He does not like them. He simply does not like green eggs. He simply does not like green ham. That should be the end of things, but in a world companies successfully sold a product to their own customers designed to kill them—and the customers knew this even as they were lighting it on fire and putting it into their mouths—you can bet this is not the end of things.
“Sam! If you let me be,
I will try them. You will see.”
Sam-I-Am won’t take not for an answer. He keeps pestering the poor sap with a never-ending stream of potential scenarios in which perhaps he might just find that he actually does like green eggs and ham: by eating them with a goat, for instance, or in a box or with a mouse. Like certain—well, actually, all—insurance commercials airing on TV, Sam never changes his actual marketing strategy, he simply makes superficial alterations that make it appear as if the question has changed. But the question has not change. It has been and will always be: do you like green eggs and ham. And since the other guy can’t rid himself of Sam simply by changing channels, he makes a fateful decision. He posits a bargain: if he will just try them once, will Sam-I-Am go away and leave him alone? It is the exactly the opening Sam has been waiting for and once the big guy actually eats the ham and eggs, he’s a dead man walking, having just guaranteed he will never be free of that Sam-I-Am and his never-say-die marketing strategy.
