To Boldly Go…

This week, I got an envelope in the mail from a family friend with an old article about Ted in it from Time magazine. The headline (I don’t have it in front of me at the moment) was something like Ted’s Little World. Which, knowing him, and being a journalist myself, i.e. someone who’s tasked with grasping the reality of a story, grates a bit.

Ted’s world might have been considered little if all you considered was the size of his room. That was definitely little, along the lines of 10 X 10.

But, in the more expansive notion of the world….it was anything but, as I’ve described in other posts. He had friends, fans, interests, family, an incredible sense of humor, and an ability to reach and touch people that still baffles me, given that he was an introvert.

The really funny thing about the article, though, is the picture, which I believe was a copy of a polaroid borrowed from my family, because I recognize it. In it, my brother, circa about age 13 or 14, is standing in the opening that led into his laminar air flow room, wearing jeans and a Star Trek shirt. A red shirt, for all you Trekkies out there, which, of course, does raise the question, WTF was he thinking?

Why he wore the red shirt is a mystery that may never be explained. And I wasn’t going to do this but, for all you non-Trekkies out there, here’s the explainer: in the TV series, Star Trek, officers who wore the red shirt, and went on missions to other planets or just happened to encounter unwelcome aliens on the ship, were always the ones who got bumped off.

Now you can watch any episode of Star Trek with the smug knowledge that, of the four officers beaming down to a planet, the blue and gold shirts are coming back, but the red shirt is a goner. You’re welcome.

My brother indoctrinated me in Star Trek early. I was six when he went into the hospital, and I remember sitting on the shag rug in our family room watching it on TV with him well before he went in. I’ve been watching it ever since. I think it either appeals to your, or it doesn’t. And if it does, you’re a lifer.

We were both lifers, devoted watchers and followers, with favorite characters and episodes, which we could quote, and mannerism we could emulate.

A few years back, I was coming back to NYC from LA, and in some hideously long security line, and I could see an elderly woman in a wheelchair ahead of me…and something about her hair, or the set of her shoulders, I just knew…It was Uhura, who we often first saw from the back, seated, earpiece in, surveying her screen and listening for alien communications. (I was right.)

At some point during Ted’s illness, someone developed a space suit he could wear, complete with an air pack he wore on his back, which delivered filtered air into the suit. He wore it to the concerts at the Capital Center I mentioned in an earlier post. On one occasion, he wore it to go to a Star Trek convention. I went too, of course,

The thing about the suit was, though it gave him freedom to leave the room, it was anything but inconspicuous. If you see someone walking around in ordinary life wearing a spacesuit and a helmet, you notice. People stared. It made me angry. Once a nurse in the hospital walked right up to him, stuck her face an inch from the faceplate of his helmet and said: “What is that?”

That, was my brother, and she’d just screwed up any sense of normalcy he felt, before he’d even left the hospital. I did what was in my capacity as a kid to combat the stares, giving dirty looks back to the starers. My brother just wanted to be normal. If it was apparent to me as a kid, that it was rude to stare, I figured others much older than I could figure it out, too. But they didn’t.

But the convention was different. People didn’t stare. These were Trekkies. Lots of them were in costume, themselves, and they just assumed my brother was, too. He fit right in, in fact. At one point, we got in an elevator, and some guy turned to him and said “Nice costume, man” and gave Ted the Vulcan salutation (a hand sign of greeting used by Spock, one of the main characters in the show). My brother gave him the hand sign back and nodded.

It was, quietly, such a great moment.

We went to a mock-up of the bridge. We sat in Captain Kirk’s seat. They had somehow rigged up a transporter room with mirrors that could make it appear as if you disappeared, just like on the show (though unlike on the show you were not transported to another planet). It was a magic trick, and brilliant. We saw stars from the show. Sulu appeared, wearing, not his uniform, but brown leather pants and a brown, lace-up leather vest with no shirt, and platform shoes.

I don’t remember a lot of details beyond that. The best moment was that moment in the elevator. That will stick with me forever.

But going back to the article, and the picture of my brother, and the Star Trek shirt, and the title of the article “Ted’s Little World.” I’m reminded of the intro for every show….

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!

It’s ironic, really. “Little World” versus the new frontier, which was without boundaries. My brother was an explorer in his own right, figuring out how to live, unconfined, in a very confined space. I don’t think Ted was defying the writer, or the magazine and their headline, by wearing the shirt in the photo…because the photo wasn’t taken for the article. But…I do love the accidental subliminal message.

Little World, hardly.