Dad and the Comics
Hampton, Logan

LOGAN: Well I want to tell a story about a response to a person who as influenced me to read and that person is my dad. I say "is" because he still continues to influence me to read. Growing up I watch my dad read. He is just an incredible lover of books and in fact when I was a kid in our little storage room was just full of books, there was just shelf after shelf of books, there were all kinds of books, Westerns there and there were books on history and politics and lots of fiction too. He was a real big fiction reader. I grew up playing in the back yard, playing kick ball, playing football and basketball and somehow I just missed it. I didn't enjoy reading and did not develop that as a part of my behavior growing up. When I got to high school years and into college years I just really wasn't a reader at all. My dad challenged me and said, "Why don't you just read what you like to read?" It's kind of interesting, he trained as an English reading teacher although later he didn't complete his career as that, but he went to college for that. So he challenged me and said, "Just read what you like to read." And he asked me, "Well, what do you like to read?" And I think I said facetiously, "I like to read the comics." He says, "Ok, well just read the comics." So I started this habit, initially I would read all of Sunday's comics and read cover to cover in the newspaper and then I started reading the comics during the day. Then I started to think a little more seriously and started asking a few more questions and started reading - I would start to see what was happening on the front page. So I started reading the front page and I started just kind of each day wanted to see what was going on in the paper. Over the course of several years or so I really developed kind of a newspaper reading habit. Now it seems that I have to start the day with reading the newspaper, although I do read it online now. It is just a regular part of my day. Interesting enough I guess it has been almost thirty years later now, I don't read the comics but I still very much enjoy reading the newspaper and I enjoy reading the things that I enjoy reading. I'm not a big fiction reader but I do enjoy reading history, finance, and reading books on spiritual matters and whatever kind of spiritual matters and biblical books as well. It all started just with me reading the comics every day. So thanks dad.