Acquiring disability meant acquiring creative wealth for author Sam Smith

Aotearoa has its own Sam Smith. But Sam Smith from Auckland’s North Shore only began to identify as being disabled in his 30s.

Leading up to his first attack of multiple sclerosis, Smith was a father to a newborn son on paternity leave from his job in dentistry.

While Smith spent the earlier parts of his career tending to pearly whites, his work is now all about bringing a grin to everyone’s faces. The comedian, TV joke-writer, audience wrangler, and podcast host has also been writing children’s books and has just released The Blizzard of Blobs, which is the second book to a graphic novel series called Miles and Jones.

“Every so often I get a hankering to wiggle someone’s tooth out,” says Smith. “But you can’t do dentistry with numb hands.” He loved the job and it set him up well financially. 

“I guess I probably did grieve. Losing my eyesight was the frustrating part.” Smith wanted to be a TV presenter but could no longer read an autocue. And he could no longer drive his children to sports practice. “But even then,” he says, “I get to do all the cool comedy stuff that I like. I realised that it wasn’t really the end of anything at all, it was the start of so many new things.”

Instead of reading a picture book with his kids, he recited poems and songs to them. And one day, without knowing it, Smith wrote a poem for his son which launched him into the realm of children’s book publishing. After his poem about animals in a zoo setting up a birthday party (Snake Brought Cake) was published, Smith wrote a second book, Don’t Scare the Dentist, before starting on the Miles and Jones series.

A period of transition is undeniable for anyone who acquires a disability. Smith thought that if he could no longer do the thing he trained to do, he might as well do the thing he wanted to do. “I just got to do my hobby, comedy, more which was great.”

Comedy isn’t new to Smith’s world, in fact, as a drama kid at school it’s always been his passion. Even during the time Smith was studying dentistry, comedy was his first love. At university, Smith was involved in the yearly sketch revue show, spending much of his time at lectures writing sketches. “I read the entire book about SNL while I was meant to be learning about teeth and pharmacology.” 

As Smith’s last year of study coincided with the beginning of 7 Days, Smith started writing jokes for Jeremy Corbett and continues that job today alongside writing the tasks for Taskmaster NZ. 

Being part of the medical profession, Smith feels he has the ability to see this as “just a thing that happens to the body when the systems get a bit out of whack… it’s just something that happens sometimes.” 

He carries it lightly. “One of the big things I’ve noticed, is that when you talk about disability, people are either like, ‘oh you poor thing’ or ‘oh my God, what an inspiration’.”

“It took me a while to get used to saying that I had a disability. It took me even longer to say that I’m a blind person.” Now, Smith leans into his niche exploring Braille publication. “I can’t read Braille myself, but the idea of writing a book that’s first and foremost for it… that’s my big project that I’m working on.” 

As he tinkers away, Smith says he feels creatively wealthy in a way that wouldn’t have been possible while working in dentistry.

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