Books that inspired me: Robots, Tintin, Judy Blume and Why I'm a Colts Fan

A lot of people ask me why I'm a Colts fan. I grew up in Los Angeles when the Colts were in Baltimore, and now they are in Indianapolis, a conservative city. I'm a progressive.

When I was six, my father bought his first standardbred race horse. The first night we went to watch it run, it won. We used to go to Hollywood Park on Saturday mornings and feed them donuts and carrots. Occasionally, I'd get to ride on the sulkies beside the trainer. I was hooked. In the summer's we'd go to Hunewill Ranch and ride Western.

So when it came to football, it was either the Colts or Broncos. I became a Colts fan. But it helped that I had the book Football's fantastic four: Payton, Jones, Haden, Dorsett. The Rams kind of sucked (and Hayden was always injured) but Bert Jones seemed like a good player so I started following the Colts. Then I learned about the 1954 Giants-Colts Championship and Johnny Unitas. The Colts rock. Since then, it's been a tough ride (think 1996 Colts-Steelers Championship) but the last few years have been especially fun with Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Edgerrin James, Dallas Clark and Joseph Addai.

Another book that really inspired me was How to Build Your Own Working Robot Pet by Frank DaCosta. I just thought this was ultra cool but for the most part the engineering was over my head. Later in elementary school, I won a homebrew robot which I took apart and then tried to build a new one from scratch with transparent plexiglass. It was crude but cool. Today, there are dozens of robot kits and I have yet to buy one...but on a pre-xmas visit to the science gift shop I stared long and hard at the Logo NXT Mindstorm kit. Oh to be a kid today!

And finally, there was Tintin. I spent six weeks in Paris with my mom and was introduced to Tintin. This was a comic that could scare, inspire and amaze me all at once.

In France, there were very few English langugage copies of Tintin books. When I returned to Los Angeles, there was one French book store that occasionally carried some. I used to plead for my Dad to go and pick up different serials on his way home from work. It's sort of amazing to me that with Amazon now, you can just browse and pick out what you want. You lucky little fuckers don't know how good you have it today. If I had been able to order the whole Tintin catalog at your age...

If you want to check out Tintin, get the individual large format editions to start out. One of these days I should blog about my favorite serials. I probably remember tons of details even today 25+ years later.

Lastly, two other books I remember at the moment:

Read With Me - The Little Engine That Could. If you ever wonder why I'm an optimist and idealist, this is why. The story is an uplifting classic and the art in my edition beautiful.

William's Doll is a story about a boy who prefers to play with a doll than to play basketball with the other boys. It's a book that gave me a distinctive perspective and insulated me from cultural leanings toward homophobia. It also helped that my mom had dozens of gay friends who were mostly like her other friends - just with better senses of humor, but this book definitely made me more open minded and accepting.

I almost forgot this one. So, we all get hand me downs. Some of us get hand me down books. Those of us with older sisters get Judy Blume books. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing rocked (don't remember any of it). Superfudge amazing (don't remember any of it either). I couldn't wait to read the next one. But no one realized in time to stop me from reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (I remember enough to still be scarred by it). It's about a teenage girl dealing with the peer pressure and anxiety while waiting for her first menstrual period. I realized pretty quickly that I'd stumbled into something that I shouldn't be reading - some secret girl world. I made sure to read the remainder of the book far away from others, but I could not put it down! So for all of you who have wondered why I seem to have a uniquely sensitive side, thank Judy Blume and my sister.

I hope you are laughing.

Today, I'm not a very literary person. I read mostly online materials and am not the kind of person to regularly curl up with a book, but these books had a huge impact on me as a child. And it was nice today when the Bears kicked a last second field goal to send the Seahawks home, I was unfazed. Brian, it's on! Pats vs. Colts on Sunday. It's our turn...

Update:Here are a few more of my favorites left out last night:

Also, my little sister says: "also, you forgot to mention that your younger siblings loved tales of the fourth grade nothing and superfudge so much that your brother still to this day calls your sister 'Fudge.'"

And another friend adds, "I had a similar Judy Blume experience when I was little. My mom got a number of books for my sister and often let me read them too. But one day I found a book called Forever that she hadn't handed down to me. It was about a girl's decision to lose her virginity, and I had the same feeling - reading it away from others because I knew I probably wasn't supposed to be reading. I remember being fascinated by it :)"

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