I Owe My Marriage To Star Trek
Know that blurb on the side of this blog in the gutter? The one about it being a "looong story" about how I met the Man? Well,as part of Anne Marie ("A Mama's Rant"')' s Blog Carnival to celebrate Star Trek's 40th anniversary, here it is:
I was 6 or 7 when the original Star Trek was on. I have vague memories of being scared of it, but I must have only seen it in passing or at someone else's house--my parents were (and are)NOT science fiction fans.
But sometime in 1977, I discovered reruns of Star Trek on WPIX in New York and I got hooked.
I was watching every night, trying to see every single episode. This, alas, was complicated by the fact that PIX showed Star Trek at 6PM. My mother (a far more organized housewife than I'll ever be, but then, I'm a working mom) always managed to call us in for dinner at around 6:50. And my father would get ticked, because I would not, not, NOT come in until the episode was over.
I love my papa, but he just didn't get it. Though I do seem to recall he had no problem with my BROTHER coming in late to supper if he was watching that moron Warner Wolf do the sports report. .....
I bought Star Trek novelizations and I started to read other science fiction and fantasy. I discovered Anne McCaffrey,Ursula LeGuin, Ray Bradbury and the fabulous Robert Heinlein, who is still one of my favorite authors.
That year I was a junior at one of the best high schools in New York, one of the special schools you have to take a test to attend. It was a science and math school--neither of which is one of my strong subjects--but it was also just a really good school for anyone who was what is now termed (snort) "gifted and talented".
Being a math and science school, it tended to have a lot of students who were science fiction fans. Though in other schools they would have been ostracized as "geeks" or "nerds", here it was so acceptable to be into such stuff that we had a Star Trek/Science Fiction club with a good sized membership.
And it was there, during a debate, that I stood up and expressed my opinions on some point, and got noticed by another club member. An eccentric young man who accosted me in the school library (really) several days later to tell me that he thought I had very nice legs...
That was April 28,1978. Fifteen and a half years later, I married the man. Or rather, The Man, as famed here in song and story.
So as I said, I owe my marriage to Star Trek. The original series, not any of the pale imitations that followed.
A "classic" book lasts because it speaks to generation after generation. The original Star Trek does the same.
Tribbles, bad episodes like "Spock's Brain", cheesy special effects and all, it had something that none of the others have had with their painfully politically correct characters and fancy computer animations.
It had heart. And that's what makes it live on. That's what made the franchise survive for all those years between the cancellation of the series and the first Star Trek movie.
That's why thousands--perhaps millions--of us watched the reruns (way before the age of video, let alone DVD), bought the novelizations, read fan fiction and attended conventions. That's why it stayed alive then, and why it's still alive and beloved now.
Happy Birthday, Star Trek. Live long and prosper.
And--thank you for everything you brought into my life..........................
