Why Muhammad Ali was my Childhood Hero

When I was a very young child, I dreaded having to grow up.

Not to be a bigger and older child, but the eventual result of having to become an adult.

I dreaded it because adults were the most boring people on the planet. To become an adult meant you had to constantly be boring: Act boring, talk about boring things, and do everything as normally and as boringly as possible. It looked like hell to me.

Kids were different. Kids could play and act silly and be little goofs. It was fun being a kid. Being an adult was boring boring boring. You had to be boring. Somehow it was a rule.

It was around five or six years old that I saw Muhammad Ali on television. I was totally transfixed. There was a grown man, an adult, bugging out his eyes, making faces, saying all kinds of silly and crazy things, talking in rhyme... I couldn't believe it. I had never seen an adult act like that before.

Ali taught me right away that growing up did not mean having to be as boring and conventional as possible. He taught me that you could still be silly, you could play, and you can have lots of fun and act like a big goof. It's one of the things that make me who I am today. Ali was controversial because he wasn't "acting like an adult", because he did things he "wasn't supposed to be doing". He didn't just act silly, he defied convention, and he defied authority. He didn't do the things he shouldn't or didn't want to do even though society was pressuring him to do them anyway.

And some people think I'm a weirdo, because I meow back at cats, or stop to pet strange dogs, or stop to smell the roses, or do my Aaron Neville impression at work. I've also protested the various wars our government has forced our nation into, and continue to work against higher authorities that are causing so much misery in my country and around the world. I say and do things that make peoples eyebrows go up, and I am constantly being told that I'm crazy or far out for doing things like running marathons or writing books or marching in anti-war protests.

And I came to realize later on just how important his lessons by example were, when I realized just how immature and foolish many of those "mature" and "boring" adults really were and are.

And that's why he was my childhood hero, and why he's still one of the biggest influences in my life.