Star Trek and Me

I was six years old when Star Trek first came out. We lived in a mobile home. There was never much money. Sometimes we had to collect coke bottles to sell for food. I wish I could say it was a happy childhood. Looking back, I would best compare it to a war zone with my father often in a drunken rage, but I had Star Trek and science. Oddly, my mother and father agreed on this and encouraged the science experiments that led to my life-long passion. If you had looked for me as a child, you would have found me away from home staring at the waning moon, walking along the rail-road tracks looking for rocks from foreign places, digging in the dirt to watch the bugs, wading in a creek, or hiding under the coffee table so I could watch Star Trek, which aired too late for me to stay up. I am positive my parents must have seen my legs sticking out from beneath the table, but no one noticed the time until the show was over. Captain Kirk became my substitute father. I thought he looked like my father, but he behaved much better, at least in most shows.