Word: boyhoods
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...that this is pure fantasy. That's why the doping scandals so outrage us and the reports of rapacious behavior by athletes so dismay us. We have a primitive need for tales about the walk-on who makes the team, the aging jock who summons the idealistic spirit of boyhood and wins our hearts. To the degree that Invincible evokes that old-time religion, to the degree that its hero's rewards are limited, it seems to me that, on the eve of a new football season, it is a modestly useful reminder of what this game - all our games...
...Wide awake now, I thought about Roger. I saw a handsome, husky guy smiling with his confident, slightly superior mien, strolling around the small, rich town of my boyhood. I heard his low hearty laugh, remembered his cutting, just off-color humor. Then that limbic system-memory link kicked in - the thing that brings you right back to your kindergarten classroom when you get a whiff of a crayon. I smelled Roger: Chivas Regal. I called my nurse back. This was always an order that always made them nervous. "Two ounces spiritus vini vitis," I said, referring to the pharmacy...
...DIED. Aaron Spelling, 83, gentle, trailblazing TV tycoon; in Los Angeles. Set on transcending his Dallas boyhood as the son of poor immigrant Jews, he produced his first hit, Burke's Law, in 1963, presaging a gift for what he called "mind candy." He made more than 3,000 shows in his five-decade career, including TV movies (The Boy in the Plastic Bubble), drama (Family) and addictive soaps (Charlie's Angels; Dynasty; Beverly Hills, 90210) that invigorated watercooler chatter but sometimes drew critical derision. "The knocks," he said, "bother you. But you have a choice of proving yourself...
...Roosevelt's childhood weakness would turn out to be the provocation for the ferociously robust man he became. At about the time Theodore reached the end of boyhood, Thee, whom young T.R. adored, set off a crisis in their relationship. He insisted on making his favorite child into a strong man by directing him to embrace a life of vigorous exercise. He told him with characteristic sternness to throw off his invalidism by force of will. He ordered the boy to "make your own body." According to Theodore's sister, Theodore "resolved to make himself strong," to turn his back...
...with nature, sometimes as a naturalist, sometimes as a hunter. It shaped his life and his enduring image. Nature provided the setting for his struggle to make himself strong, and it opened up a world of scientific discovery at the same time. Roosevelt always remembered the day during his boyhood when he was walking up Broadway and spotted a dead seal on display in a market. Fascinated by the animal, he went back to see it again and again and eventually took its skull home to study. It was the first of countless natural-history projects...