Love Letters to Star Trek by Jaworski Birdie

Author:Jaworski, Birdie [Jaworski, Birdie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: trekkies, birdie jaworski, family, star trek
Publisher: Ramses Press
Published: 2012-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

In the Movies

The boys with the cast of FanBoys

The Dog Who Loved Trek

Sissy: The dog who loved Star Trek

Data's Dog

Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s android science officer, shared his starship quarters with a sleek cat named Spot. Data wanted to be human, wanted to understand what makes some of us choose chocolate over vanilla, what makes us giggle when tickled, the strange and etheric connections that tie our species together. A cat’s fiercely independent streak can push a man to curse, can cause a woman to shake her fist in frustration. Maybe that gave Data a bit of a walk on the wild emotive side. But in my opinion, Data should have partnered with a dog.

My first dog lived to the overripe age of 21. Rascal left the planet with a million soft tumors folded into the sagging hollows of his belly, thick milky cataracts covering both eyes, and a serious incontinence problem. He left the way companion dogs often do, human arms gently cradling his neck, a vet’s needle in one arthritic leg.

Rascal followed me home from the first grade the very day I turned six. We lived one block from the Catholic school. I wore a green plaid skirt, dingy white collared blouse, and scuffed patent leather shoes. I wasn’t one of the cute girls. I knew that even at five-almost-six. I carried a hawkish nose, an angular chin, perpetual scabs on both knees. I was a bit chubby, a kid who loved buttered bread and mashed potatoes with gravy, a kid who flew down Cold Spring Hill on her banana bike, hands hovering above the handlebars in a show of terrified joy, no hands until I hit a stray divot of grass, flew over the front wheel, and skidded twenty feet, butt first, on a newly-laid sea of pea gravel. Thirty-eight years later, I still have a lopsided ass from that incident.

The pup trailed behind me, the cut of his exposed ribs pressing a pattern of interference waves into the air. I probably smelled like the cheap hotdogs and processed government cheese the nuns served at lunch. I probably smelled kind and defenseless, smelled like the kind of hungry human a dog could love. My parents let me keep him. We were inseparable.

Dogs bring out the doggedy god in humans the way cats bring out the meow in an android. We rolled in summer’s tall grass, drooled when the kitchen radiated the scent of spaghetti and meatballs, chased kids, dogs, cats, and imaginary friends down Cold Spring Hill, careful to avoid the evil gravel. It took me ’til my current age of 44, but now I know that every life is a lonely life, every person walks a tightrope over shark-infested waters. We all yearn to belong to a pack; we all feel isolated at times, lone hunters, sometimes even behind polarized shades that block any hint of sun. But at ten, at thirteen, at twenty-one, Rascal’s pack of me-and-you was my identity, my best den. He was Alpha.

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