Conversations with strangers can spark strange trains of thought.
Follow me down this path if you will
On the intentionally-overpopulated left lapel of the tattered suit jacket I insist on using as daily street-wear (I am for being a semi-feral middle-aged guy and I take this most seriously, I tell you true), up at the top, is a brass-toned emblem which has come to be known as the 'Starfleet Delta'. Most non-Trek fans I know know it aptly as the chest communicator wearable device in
Next Gen and forward; prior to that it was a chest patch on the classic
Trek unis.
If you need any more introduction than that, welcome back from your desert island, friend; there's probably an orientation session for your re-entry to society and you should be running along to that and, BTW Nixon was impeached, o-yes-where-was-I? Oh.
This has a sort of pride-of-place at the top of the button-and-pin cascade of what other people would call one's left jacket lapel. I have three of them as personal posessions: One with the Engineering division logo, one with the Science division logo, and this one, with a lower-case gamma. This was inspired, I believe, by the cover sheet to the "General" section of The Book (the
Star Fleet Technical Manual, my nick name for it vocally rendered in the style of Vic Tayback's character in "A Piece of the Action", please and thanks) which showed the Delta filled in by that same character and, though never an actual division insignia was adapted as such by the maker of the pin.
I don't have a Command division insignia. I never was the Captain type.
But when I was dropping cans as the Bottle Drop over by 122nd and Glisan, which I can do now that we're Olivia re-enabled, a person waiting on-line to get in at opening called me a Trekkie and we discussed things
Trek for a while and I had a thought about that, because he asked me if I was, in fact, a Trekkie, and I realized, in that moment, that I couldn't quite wholeheartedly think that I really deserved to be called that.
Understand this: I am a fan and adore
Star Trek, will do down to my dying breath on this tiny planet. It's not that, as in those days when your
Trek-fan might clear their throat and insist "I prefer Trek
ker, thank you." I've always loved the term and never saw it as an insult. Caught every
Trek re-run back when that was the only
Trek there was to have. Even owned a copy of
Mission to Horatius.
No, I am reluctant to accept the label because Trekkies are a higher form of fan than I am. I have yet to watch any
Discovery or
Picard; as a matter of fact, I don't much care for the de-democratization of
Trek that streaming channels promise to bring us. But sometimes the best thing I can do is watch an episode of
TOS (even the crappier episodes).
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is
still one of my favorite movies, even though maturity has brought me to terms with the fact that the story was pretty lame (even then, though, I was figuring
nice try kicking your game up to Star Wars level, guys ... If you would have told me that movie was the root of a sprawling franchise I would have thought you mad).
But I know people who Trek harder than me just getting out of bed in the morning. I admire and respect them. 'Tis they who deserve the rubric of Trekkie ... not I.
And I'm Okay with that.
On the intentionally-overpopulated left lapel of the tattered suit jacket I insist on using as daily street-wear (I am for being a semi-feral middle-aged guy and I take this most seriously, I tell you true), up at the top, is a brass-toned emblem which has come to be known as the 'Starfleet Delta'. Most non-Trek fans I know know it aptly as the chest communicator wearable device in Next Gen and forward; prior to that it was a chest patch on the classic Trek unis.
