(This is part of the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon, which was too cool a topic to skip!)

(The first part of this post is excerpted from The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book.)

My first Bond flick was half of Thunderball. In the latter half of 1970 and the first part of 1971, my father was severely impaired by bronchial asthma, so much so that he had difficulty walking more than a few steps. We went to a lot of movies, since this was something he could do with his kids while sitting down. On one memorable occasion, we saw a triple-feature of Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and Goldfinger at the Queen Anne Theater in Bogota, New Jersey. We came in partway through Thunderball, watched the next two, and then stayed to see the beginning of Thunderball again. The influence of this experience on my young mind cannot be understated–six hours in a dark theater left me in a state of Bond-brainwash worthy of The Ipcress File! I was blinking, bleary-eyed, and the whole world was James Bond. In addition, my perception of Thunderball was hopelessly skewed–I found it incomprehensible yet fascinating, and didn’t understand the plot for another twenty years. All three movies were blurred together by the long session of movie-viewing. I had no understanding of plot or character, just pictures and feelings. As a child, my knowledge of Bond was shaped by this onslaught of imagery that was beyond my understanding–sexy, exotic, colorful, very adult, yet somehow accessible.

A short time after this experience, Diamonds Are Forever was released, and for the first time I saw a Bond film in current release. To tell you the truth, I think I was too young to know the difference between a re-release and a new movie, although Diamonds Are Forever stands out more in my mind because it wasn’t blurred together with two other films! I know that my father was enthusiastic about Connery’s return, and during the pretitles teaser, he whispered to me that Bond was seeking Blofeld because he had killed Bond’s wife–at the time, I thought this meant Kissy, the woman he “married” in You Only Live Twice (my father hates George Lazenby to this day, and never took me to see On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

To a certain extent, Diamonds Are Forever got blended in my mind with the earlier Connery movies I had seen a few weeks or months before, but it also stood out. More than any other movie, if you say “James Bond” I’ll think of Diamonds Are Forever. When Connery walks down the beach towards that soon-to-be topless sunbather and gives his name as “Bond, James Bond,” he is in some way always talking to me.

Because my father walked away from Bond in the Moore era, so did I. He never took me to another Bond movie, and that image was just an image for many years. I saw both Octopussy and Never Say Never Again in the theater with the same Bond-fan boyfriend, and enjoyed one of them, but it didn’t arouse my passion to return to Bondage. I saw Tomorrow Never Dies on video with my then-husband, and we loved it, but again, I didn’t feel like, ‘Wow, now I’m a Bond fan!’

Fast forward to 1999. I am reading a movie site, because I read movie sites, and people are discussing which actor was the best Bond. I realize I’ve never seen a Dalton movie, and so I cannot fairly participate in the discussion. I go to Blockbuster and rent The Living Daylights.

By this time my marriage to the Brosnan fan is over. He is out with our son, and they come home while I’m watching the Afghan airbase raid. My son is transfixed. And so am I.

The Living Daylights is marvelous adventure, full of action, anger, and romance. I am so reminded of Connery, of my childhood image of Bond, that the feeling of being a Bond fan comes flooding back. I am overwhelmed by how much I love James Bond.

Now, here’s a thing about my son: He has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He must do things in order. Steps must not be skipped. So, because he was now interested in seeing Bond movies, we had to watch all of them, in order.

This took a long time. No weeknight movies when there’s homework to do, and he’s only with me every other weekend. But by the time I we’d watched a few I was hardcore. I was sitting on message boards, talking with Bond fans. I was looking up trivia. I was downloading songs. Suddenly, Bond movies became the most delicious filmic treats and I had to eat them up.

After we watched them all I watched them again, sometimes with Arthur, sometimes not. And read more and researched more and expressed opinions on message boards. And then, somehow, I wrote a book.

By the way, it was only during this round of movie watching in 1999 that I finally understood the plot of Thunderball. Turns out it’s easy to follow if you watch from the beginning.