I AM SAM

1. Describe Sam’s impairment or his being a multiple impaired individual.

- Sam’s disability is mental retardation which refers to substantial limitations in present
functioning and is characterized by significantly sub-average intellectual functioning,
existing concurrently with related limitations in two or more adaptive skills.
- Sam has a mild mental retardation, in which it means that retarded are capable of
learning numerous skills and living independent or semi-independent adult live. In
terms of Sam’s vocational status, he was able to support his everyday life as well as
the needs of her daughter with the use of his job in Starbucks Coffee as a clerk. In
terms of the mental age range in his 40 years of age, he has an intellectual capacity
of 7 years old that’s why although Sam can communicate effectively, his speech and
language ability is still not complete since at the age of 7 are unable to articulate all
sounds, have a limited vocabulary, are still growing syntactically and many are
pragmatically inappropriate.
- In terms of his social skill, he was a meaningful yet a little immature relationship with
his friends or support group which is an amazing thought about person who is
mentally challenge. In terms of his adult life, he was able to be a father and becomes
a parent to her daughter Lucy Diamond
2. What are Sam’s developmental characteristics as mentally challenged individual?
- The movie displays Sam in some conversations in which he is unintelligible. It takes
him a long time to express his thoughts and once he does, the content of what he
intended to say is uncertain.
- Sam also has a difficult time understanding the content of words like when his lawyer
asks for “a motion to recess” and Sam responds, “I don’t exactly like recess very
much.” He does not understand that words have multiple meanings and that his
lawyer is not referring to a school recess.
- One characteristic also that hinders Sam’s language abilities is that he has no
patience, which causes difficulties with turn-taking during conversations. In the
movie, a waitress tries to explain to Sam that they didn’t have what he ordered but
instead of listening to her, he got angry and kept repeating his order in a high tone of
voice.
- Sam lacks appropriate eye contact, constantly looks away from others and looks up
at ceiling.
- Sam is confronted by a hooker in one scene and is arrested. Due to his disability,
Sam is not able to recognize a hooker let alone fully understand the situation. Sam
was able to avoid prosecution because of his obvious impairment however he was
not able to escape the social workers.

3. Why did Lucy’s custody taken from him as a father?

- Lucy’s relationship with his father was nothing near strained or unpleasant but rather
a warm and tightknit kind of bond that could move viewers to tears. Not long after, on
the day of Lucy’s 7th birthday, their lives came out harder when school and Child
Services questioned Sam’s parenting ability and put him into trial to probe whether
he is capable to provide the needs of her growing daughter. Lucy, slowly realizing
her father’s limitations, was afraid of surpassing his father’s 7 year old cognitive
 ability and therefore, denied any excellence emerging within her as she ages. This
alarmed social workers to take Lucy away from a mentally challenged Sam.
4. How did he fight for the custody of his daughter?
- Sam was a fighter. His love for his daughter knows no bounds and he’d do
everything just to get her back. It was Sam’s everlasting love for his daughter that
gives him the strength to step out of his comfort zone and reach out for help. When
Lucy was taken, he knows he needs a lawyer, so he and his friends look through the
Yellow Pages to find a good one, leading them to Rita Harrison. Together, they fight
a custody battle to get Lucy back to her father.
5. Describe Sam as a father.
Ever since Lucy’s mother ran away days after her birth, Sam has been a great parent
while filling the gap of her mother’s absence. He did all the diapers, the feedings, the
potty-training with the help of Annie, their neighbor. He just freely gives Lucy all the love
he possesses. He adores her, and she adores him right back. He may not be the ideal
parent that any child could ask for, Lucy still adores him so much. And Sam may have a
mental disability, but he takes his role as Lucy’s father quite seriously. He tries to be the
best father he knows how to be, working hard for Lucy and does his best to make her
happy.
6. Describe Lucy as a daughter.
- “I want no other daddy but you”, Lucy said to Sam which shows her daughterly
affection to her dad. Lucy is a smart girl as she learns incredibly fast for such a
young age. Her love for her father and fear to be different from him urge her to
intentionally hold back in school to avoid surpassing her father’s intellect. She treats
Sam not just a father but a best friend too and she knows how to communicate to
him unlike everybody else.

7. Describe the legal counsel.

- Rita is a very sophisticated woman and one who is far too busy. She seems to have
everything with her good looks, profession, flashy car and reputation as a high-paid
lawyer whom Sam desperately sought for help to win the custody of Lucy, but amid
those luxuries, the sad truth lies beneath them. She has no impairment like Sam’s
but she has her own troubles too. In truth, her family is broken, her son resents her
and her job isn’t great as it appears. Sam and Rita are poles apart in life. Although it
is clear throughout the movie that Rita did not want to help Sam, she was forced to
take on Sam’s case pro bono, for free and after much struggle she finally discovers
that Sam, although mentally disabled, really has a heart filled with “love, devotion
and goodness.”
8. Describe the foster mother.
Randy, the foster mother who took Lucy under their care (with her husband), is a nice
woman who longed for a child of her own. Her eagerness to adopt Lucy quicker into her
household is shown. Every so often, she’d get displeased when Lucy and Sam meet
especially when Sam moved closer to Randy’s home. Her fear that the adoption of Lucy
would be in vain and Lucy’s distant interest to them is painted into her face. She wanted
Lucy to be happy with a complete family but she know and understand too that Lucy will
be happier beside his father so she helped Sam win back the custody.
9. What virtue/moral value/insights you gained from the story/movie?
- Sam has his own circle of friends who happen to be just like him. One of my favorite
scenes from the movie is when Sam and his friends take Lucy shoe shopping and
when it’s time to pay for the shoes, Sam is low on cash. But Sam’s friends come to
the rescue and start pulling money out to pay for the shoes.
-
- Sam doesn’t let his disability stop him from living life, and although he is labeled
“slow” and uneducated, he manages to obtain a few different jobs throughout the
movie and proves to be very organized by replenishing sugar packets at Starbucks,
taking care of multiple dogs and organizing pepper packets at Pizza Hut.
- and I don‟t think his disability should define him as a person, but his strong will and
determination should. He has this genuine kindness that really shines through. Sam
is a fighter and what impresses me the most is that despite his disability, he tries his
best to be a good father.
- Why This Film is Important: Historically, people with disabilities are people that
society, as a whole, does not want to deal with. This is especially true about people
with mental disabilities. It is important to have a film that deals with the
discrimination that a person with disabilities can face, particularly when it deals with
issues as important as family and parenthood. This movie is about the love of a
family and the things you can learn from people who are different from yourself when
you open up and let other people in.
- For me, intellectual ability is not the basis to be a parent especially a good one
because just like in the movie “Love is all you need” which is what Sam gives to his
daughter Lucy. Even if he has disability he was able to give all his best to be a great
daddy to his daughter and gives unconditional love. This movie shows that even a
father who is mentally challenged can be a responsible father. It carefully re-
examines the relational themes of love, patience, and devotion. Thus, a parent is
someone who wholeheartedly gives love and committed to protect the child no
matter what.
- The main issue faced is Sam's custody battle for his daughter, Lucy. Since he only
had the mental capacity of a 7-year-old, many people believed him to be unfit as
Lucy got older. He did have some quirks that could impair his ability to be a father,
but he was far from unfit. He loved Lucy more than anything in the world and she
was everything to him. Throughout his battle, he convinces many people, including
Lucy’s unbelieving foster parents, that he can be the father Lucy needs in her life. He
loves her more than anything and proves that time and time again. If I was in Sam’s
shoes, I believe I would have done almost everything the same way. I would have
worked my hardest to prove to everyone I was a fit parent, such as Sam was able to
achieve. This shows that our society does harshly judge those with disabilities. Many
people did not think Sam was fit to be a parent simply because of his IQ; they did not
even consider the love he felt for Lucy or how much love Lucy felt for him. This
shows that sometimes society needs to step back and look at the larger picture; that
sometimes IQ isn’t the most important thing and love is.
- I am Sam is a challenging movie to both abled and disabled persons. It showed love
and affection that should be emulated. Sam portrayed himself as an asset to society
and a positive, living influence for Lucy. Sam story becomes a tale about the
transformation disability to enablement.
 - The film portray’s society aversion to Sam’s disability and ability to become a hero as
he overcome his challenges in order to become a good parent.
50 first dates
1. Describe Lucy’s mental impairment.
- Lucy’s specific condition is described as Goldfield’s Syndrome, a fictional disorder
created for this movie. The way in which Lucy’s memory degrades is unlike any actual
type of amnesia. For Lucy, falling asleep is a trigger after which the previous day’s
experiences are completely forgotten. She suffers from short-term memory loss after a
horrible car accident. This accident damaged her temporal lobe; more specifically, her
hippocampal region which is crucial in forming new memories.

2. What are Lucy’s manifestations as mentally impaired individual?

- Lucy relives the day of her accident over and over, as if it had never happened. She
eats breakfast at the same diner, reads the same paper, paints the same mural, and
watches the same movie with her brother and father
- Each morning she wakes up without any memories whatsoever of anything that
happened after her accident.
- Lucy wakes up everyday believing it is her father’s birthday; October 13 of 2002. It was
that day that she and her father got into a car accident. Every morning after that day, she
wakes up and completes the tasks she had planned for that day over again. Every night,
while she sleeps “her slate is wiped clean”, as said in the movie.
The damage experienced by the hippocampal region of her brain has left her with a form
of amnesia, referred to in the movie as “Goldfield’s Syndrome”.
- While this disease is completely fictional, there is, however, a type of amnesia –
anterograde amnesia- that describes Lucy’s condition well. Anterograde amnesia is
when one can no longer form long-term memories that have occurred after a specific
event. These events would include brain surgery or a brain injury. So while all of Lucy’s
memories gained or experienced prior to the accident are intact (people’s names, her
childhood, who she is, where she lives, etc.), everything learned and experienced after
is, in a sense, “new” to her every single day.
3. How did her father accept her impairment or how did he show his love for his daughter?
- To spare Lucy the heartbreak of reliving the accident every day, Marlin and Doug,
Lucy's lisping steroid-addicted brother, re-enact Marlin's birthday by following a script,
including putting out the Sunday newspaper, refilling Lucy's shampoo bottles, re-
watching the same Minnesota Vikings game, and re-watching the movie The Sixth
Sense where Marlin and Doug halfheartedly say, "Wow. Didn't see that coming," during
the famous plot-twist.

4. As a husband, how did Henry try to help Lucy, his wife, regain her short term memory?
- He makes a video for her to view each morning that sums up the events from the year
of the accident to the days of their dating and wedding up to the present days with a
child in the picture. All this Henry did so she can brush up on what she has forgotten.
5. What virtue/moral value/insights you gained from the story/movie?
- Till death do us part.” This is the statement that can be best described Henry for his
unconditional love to Lucy. I was really touched when I watched the movie “50 First
Dates” for its interesting and convincing story that would drive the viewers to a deep
emotion and sympathy to the main characters of the movie. It gave moral lessons about
how hard it is to have that memory incapacitated and what love can do as well. I could
not imagine myself in the position of Henry who sacrificed much because of his love to
Lucy. It was not easy for him to introduce himself to the one he loved every single day
because Lucy forgot everything that happened yesterday. Lucy could not able to
remember everything about yesterday because she was incapable of converting short-
term memories into long-term memories (anterograde amnesia). But Henry did not lose
hope. He believed that someday, Lucy will retain her memory.
Furthermore, nothing could be harder than the situation of Lucy where she could not live
in a normal way. Everything has to be changed every day (tomorrow is another day). Her
father and brother sacrificed much just for her not to hate life and let her to believe that
she is living in a normal way. I was so pity for her especially when she knew about her
situation.
It was then I realized that I am still so lucky that I do not have that condition or else, I
could not imagine myself living in this world of practicalism and having that situation.
Nevertheless, the best driving force for those who have that lost of memory like Lucy is
the love of the family and other people around them. We have to let them feel that they
are still significant to this world like others. We have to let them understand that we only
pass through this world at once and if we lost our life, we can never have it back again.
Thus, we must live our life to the fullest whoever we are and whatever we’ll be.