Blind Sided

Once upon a time in Memphis, Tennessee, there lived a couple named Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. They were very nice people and very wealthy people, and they liked to use their good fortune to help those around them.

One day, they met a poor giant black boy named Michael Oher who didn't have any place to sleep, so they let him come to their house, and after a while, they all decided he should stay forever and be part of their family. If Sean and Leigh Anne had not done this, Michael Oher probably would never have had the confidence--let alone the opportunity, let alone the education—to discover that he was a natural -born football phenom. He never would have made it to college without their help, and he never would have made it to the NFL, which he did.

If Michael Oher had not had the opportunity to learn that he was built and wired to play football better than anyone else possibly ever, Michael Lewis (contributing editor for Vanity Fair and childhood friend of Sean Tuohy) would not have written a book about him, entitled The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. If Michael Lewis had not written this book, John Lee Hancock would not have adapted it into a screenplay and made a movie, out of it, and Sandra Bullock would not have been cast in it, or nominated for an Academy Award.

If Sandra Bullock had not been nominated for an Academy Award (which she won, by the way), I would never have been interested in the movie, which was based on the book, which I read, because I like to read books that have been made into movies, and I would not have discovered that the book The Blind Side, in addition to telling the story of Michael Oher, is a very well-written, easy to understand, enjoyable explanation of the game of football and why it works the way it does and how it has developed over the last thirty years. So by reading The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, I now understand football a million times better than I did with the so-called help of Howie Long and his Dumb Book for Dummy Dum-Dums, and I can recommend it to you with the promise that even if you still aren't really interested in football, it is a very, very good book.

And the moral of the story is that you should always do kind things for other people, because you never know when someday, down the chain of events, your good deed might end up helping me.