My father, Buddy Robinson, was superchic - a dandy. He always wore dinner jackets at night and espadrilles in the summer, but with his own flair. He was even well dressed when riding a tractor or listening to a ball game on the radio.
My father brought a basketball to the hospital when I was born, and he already had it embedded in his head that I would be a ball player.
When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.
I was at a ballpark as much as I was in school. I was on a basketball court or football field as much as I was in school, so I definitely was receiving mentorship when it came to coaches, my father, my grandfather, and my uncles.
The thing that everyone remembers about 'Bambi' is that moment. 'The Lion King,' took it to quite an extreme because it was an action sequence: his father was killed in a wildebeest stampede - I related, because mine was, too.
When my father was posted to Malaysia, we'd take bacon-and-egg sandwiches in our backpacks and go hiking in the jungle or make bamboo rafts to sail down rivers.
I've been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father's adding machine. Back then I'd type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.
I joined Khalsa College just opposite Don Bosco in class XI, but soon I quit studies and was sent to Bangkok by my father to learn martial arts, as that is the only place we could afford given that I would also work there to support my training.
I was born in a middle class Muslim family, in a small town called Myonenningh in a northern part of Bangladesh in 1962. My father is a qualified physician; my mother is a housewife. I have two elder brothers and one younger sister. All of them received a liberal education in schools and colleges.
The first musical sound I ever heard was from a banjo. My father played, and I was an infant in a crib, and something just stayed with me from those early days.
My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music.
It would be too glib, not a hundred per cent true, to say that my father's career as a banker was what made me a writer. But it would be slightly true, and it was certainly the case that his work as a banker made me see that the trade-offs people make between their work and their lives are often badly skewed.
My father was an investment banker, a stock broker.
My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.
As we were baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise. As then baptism has been given us by the Savior, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, so, in accordance with our baptism, we make the confession of the creed, and our doxology in accordance with our creed.
My father was a Methodist and my mother was a Baptist.
I was raised in the Baptist church... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.
I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.
I was kosher until I had my Bar Mitzvah, and I parlayed officially becoming a man into telling my father I wanted to eat cheeseburgers.
The loss of my father marked my life. I'm 88 years old and I'm still mourning him because it's such a drama for me. It was just after my bar mitzvah and it was so tragic. The effect on me, I carry it all my life.
