by Mollie O’Brien
Well, I know he has been a fan since he was a kid and ‘Star Trek’ used to show on TV in black and white (40 years ago). I could even put up with having him running with the shopping trolley through the supermarket on a Saturday morning doing the weekly shopping ten years later in the 70’s, just so we could get home in time to watch the re-runs (no VCR in those days).
Even being dragged out to stand in a queue on a Thursday night to be among the first to see ST:The Movie (yawn) I could handle reasonably well (after all, he did take me to see a movie I wanted to see once…). I even tolerated the boxes of copied VCR tapes, the books, the magazines—and then much later the DVD collections (oh the cost!) and the autographed photos from eBay; The collection of badges and other paraphernalia scattered about the house in ‘safe’ places…
All of this I can understand and put up with. After all, after being exposed to ‘Star Trek’ through connotation myself over the last 30 years, I really enjoy ‘Star Trek,’ and its characters and stories. After all, it is sci-fi, and it is Star Trek—the only one.
But now, things have changed. SFI (STARFLEET International) has entered our lives and the whole place is now upside down. The study is full of manuals and encyclopaedias dealing with everything from US Army Combat Training Manuals to business books written using the ST series as a basis for their marketing philosophies. Bags of bits and pieces for his uniforms (note the plural: there are apparently three required). Ribbons and medals, rank pins, braid, and award certificates galore. All the paraphernalia that would be normally associated with our businesses’ activities, but instead belongs to this new found ‘responsibility.’
And so what am I really talking about here?
Well ever since the day that he discovered SFI, I have ‘lost’ my husband.
No more chit-chat while watching TV of an evening. No more having him in bed reading with me before sleeping. No more conversations over dinner about our work day. Nope—nothing like that. If it isn’t to do with SFI, or the wonderful Southern Cross and Region 11, or even more importantly the Starfleet Marine Corps — then it isn’t worth mentioning. The hours and hours spent surfing the ‘net; designing logos and websites; the newsletter articles read and written; the chat with others from everywhere in the world but our lounge; the long nights and weekend afternoons reading, learning, and exam work (just like the old Varsity days really); the researching and discovery—all this has now taken over any bit of spare time he had.
And am I complaining—well, no I’m not really. How could I? The pleasure and excitement that I see when he finds out something new—or the discoveries he makes that even to my mind, are of interest– the new friends he speaks of with admiration and that tone of ‘special comradeship’ that only those in a select group know of—all of this is both wonderful to watch and to be a part of.
At the end of the day, this is exactly what commitment and pleasure to any form of hobby or relaxation is all about. It is the reward for the effort of commitment and involvement in something
Not the hours and hours of work (I’m sure he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t get enjoyment from it), nor the sad/bad times when things go wrong (more in the past than today, thankfully). Not the people who do not, or choose not, to recognise the efforts that go into creating a ’good’ social environment. No—it is not those things, they are the negatives. It is those simple positives that allow me to have secret smile to myself when I hear him talk, or see the results of the work of his and others. It is the registration of the absolute pleasure that he has derived from doing all this and being so involved in it all that I can surely forgive Kirk and Spock and company. It isn’t their fault, but they surely did not know what they were doing when they let themselves into my husband’s world.
So thank you, ‘Star Trek,’ for at least I can be thankful he didn’t go gaga over something like Baywatch….
Mollie O’Brien
USS Southern Cross
