Bobby Fischer Dies

[filkertom]

When I was growing up, I was something of a chess prodigy. Or at least I thought I was. Turned out I was just better than average. I remember a two-day tournament where, on the first day, I blasted through the competition, and apparently I was somewhichwayhow mathematically ranked as a master for a few hours, because that's all I faced on the second day and they put me in my place. It was a devastating, humbling experience, and probably one of the most important of my life, because it showed me that not only is there likely someone better than you, there's likely a lot of people better than you, so don't get too full of yourself.

Anyway. It was the perfect time to be a chess nut: 1972. Boris Spassky was the dirty lousy undeserving commie chess "champion", but we, the Good Guys, the U. S. of A.... we had Bobby Fischer. Who, it turns out, was not exactly hero material. But Godamighty the man could play chess.

Mr. Fischer has passed away at the age of 64. May he find the rest he never could while alive.

Who were your heroes when you were a kid? The ones who really influenced you? Mine were Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock, but I never came close to achieving their emotional fortresses. (Thankfully, Mr. Fantastic showed me I didn't have to, and I could still get the girl.) Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, of course. You may not believe it, but Galen and Joseph Lister (I had a fantastic kid's biography of heroes of medicine). My school principal at the time of my tournament-chess days, Dr. Betty Ritzenhein. And then one year, tenth grade, everything changed: I heard the works of Cosby and Carlin, and I picked up books by two guys named Asimov and Ellison, and dubheach told me about this other guy named Tolkien....

Comments

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Superman and quite a number of the folks from the Legion of Super-Heroes. I had the Adventure comic that they first contacted Superboy. I was 8 in 1960, so the Silver Age was in full bloom--villains like Mechano, Bizarro, Konga, Braniac. All of them were worthy of a fight with Superman and could hold their own, at least for a while. I admired Superman's code in that he would not kill anything, even if they deserved it.

During my junior-high years, James Kirk and Doc Smith's Galactic Patrol.

High-school, I discovered Heinlein, so I admired Jubal Harshaw and Wyoming Knott and worshipped Valentine Michael Smith. About the same time, I discoved stories about a bunch of doughy halflings and a wizard. I probably reread LOTR two-dozen times during my Junior and Senior years in high-school.

The person who most affected my life, however, was David Lamb, from Time Enough for Love. I read about him during my third year of college in 1973, dropped out of school, and modelled my life after him. So far, it's working great.

Tom