Live Long and Prosper -- Confessions of a Trekkie

I was a Trekkie as a kid. Not that I'm not one now because it is one of those things that you are for life, but when I was a kid I was more your rabid insane fan sort of Trekkie and now I am more your incidental, retired sort of Trekkie. I would rush home every day after school just to watch the reruns of the show ad nauseum. This was long before the days of video tapes and VCRs. I would try to audio tape episodes so that I could listen to them when the show was not on. Okay, that didn't work so well since even cassette tapes were still in their infancy.

Just to be clear here, I do now have the entire original series on DVD. Most of my collectibles have gone by the wayside, except for an original script autographed by Walter Koenig and IDIC necklace. Oh, and a stuffed tribble.

In high school my nickname was Spock. My best friend was Captain Kirk. I didn't know that her real name was Diane until I had known her for several weeks because we met in a Star Trek moment. That moment was also when we got our nicknames.

She was sitting with a mutual friend and saying "This is MY starship!" I walked up and said, "Logically, Captain, the ship belongs to Star Fleet." It was kismet.

(In the interest of full disclosure, Leonard Nimoy himself nearly died laughing once when I was introduced to him as Mr. Spock at a car show in Denver.)

Eventually we had two Captain Kirks as more kids from previous Trek groups joined us. The other Captain Kirk could have been the inspiration for the Big Bang Theory as he went on to be a university physics professor.

My interest in science fiction was hardly limited to Star Trek, but I was often frustrated by the lack of female characters in popular science fiction literature. As an aspiring writer this led me to try to write stories for and about women. The first short story I had published was a sci fi piece about a male astronaut dying alone in space after the destruction of his spacecraft. He is rescued at the last moment by a beautiful alien woman who removes him from his body. Her species had been watching over earthlings for many millennia and we had come to refer to them as angels.

But I digress.

Being a sci fi geek and a Trekkie helped me get through some very difficult years of my life. Back in those days these things were not as mainstream as they are today. We existed on the fringe of society and worried our parents. We endured many jokes of how we were doomed to live in our parents' basements for eternity without ever having sex. While I am sure that happened to someone somewhere along the line, it didn't happen in our group -- that I know of.

I would have happily married the second Captain Kirk in our group, but he turned out to be gay. I never married because I never found the right person. That, and I am unwilling to repeat the marriage mistakes my parents made.

I am still a geek and a nerd and it still makes me happy. It also makes me happy that both sci fi and I are both more mainstream now. Back then we never would have guessed that we would have not only Sy Fy as its own network, but also BBC America loaded with Dr. Who.

Life is good.  Live long and prosper everyone!