A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE…

Yesterday I went looking for a specific image in my picture files. I finally found it, but what I found during the search put me on a trip down memory lane that won’t let me go.

 

A couple decades ago I found (cut out, and saved) a Family Circus cartoon because it reflected what I’m feeling right now–and felt then.

 

In the cartoon, a youngster is in the attic with his grandma, who is sitting near an open “treasure chest” of her own making. The boy asks, “Why do you keep all of this stuff?”  The grandma replies, “To prove to myself that it all really happened.”

 

I stumbled across images of myself with critters, celebrities, experiences, and friends that, frankly, I haven’t thought of in years. (Life goes on. We have additional experiences; the vast majority of earlier experiences fade toward oblivion. Unless!!!) And as soon as I did, my heart opened up and I found myself basking in the glory of newly-resurrected, cherished memories.

 

With David Hasselhoff at Baywatch Wrap Party (story in “Floating Around Hollywood”)

Signed photo from Monte Markham (story about meeting him is in “Floating Around Hollywood”)

With Ed Asner and Mike Farrell at an Actors and Others for Animals benefit

 

With Earl Holliman and Linda Lavin at same benefit…

 

I didn’t recall a single thing about meeting Leonard Nimoy the two times I met and spent a few moments with him.  Admittedly, my affection for Leonard was one-sided; he didn’t know me much, if at all. Despite the fact that I contributed a few articles and art pieces to his fan club publication, I didn’t sense much (if any) reciprocation.

 

You know DeForest Kelley reciprocated, and then some–going well above and beyond the call of duty! That story has been widely shared elsewhere in and in my book DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal: A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best. Unlike Leonard and Bill, who were constantly being hounded for interviews when the series first aired, De wasn’t often tapped for additional fame via magazine or TV interviews. And he wasn’t the type to reach out for notoriety, but any that came his way–like the article I wrote about meeting him for the first time in Wenatchee, which he sent to TV Star Parade for consideration (it was published word-for-word)–he appreciated mightily and  did what he could to capitalize on them. (I later wrote an article called “Getting Down to Earth with the Reel McCoy” for Grit which he approved and gave me permission to submit. I had gleaned a bunch of quotes from his public appearances and elsewhere and wrote it as a sort of one-on-one interview. So we were unofficially a “publicity team” of sorts, I suppose, in retrospect…

 

1969

 

1988

..and the beat goes on, and the beat goes on…

Northern Kittitas County Tribune 2016

Star Trek The Magazine, 2007 and 1999

 

Cowboys and Indians Article Nov 2016

(I can post the entire C&I article in November but not until then…)

 

But back to my anecdote about Leonard Nimoy.  I was very surprised to find two, three-page reports of the few minutes (and the efforts leading up to spending those few minutes) that I spent with him.  I was flabbergasted that I had forgotten all of the details. (Not just some of the details, but all of them!!!)  (If you haven’t been keeping journals and scrapbooks of your life and times, you will regret it deeply if you don’t already. And you should start NOW, if you haven’t been keeping a journal. It’s never too late!)

 

The reports are teeny-bopper and embarrassing. I wouldn’t publish them now–although I may eventually publish some of the poems I wrote about Mr. Spock. They’re universal and pretty cool. They’re about his isolation and the unrequited love that so many fans, including me (and even Nurse chapel), felt about his inability to connect romantically.  I felt sorry for him; but I was feeling sorry for myself at that time, too, because I felt pretty much the same way: alien, wrongly categorized, and thoroughly misunderstood by everybody in my orbit. (Now that I’ve revealed that I’m transgender after all these years, you can understand why Spock’s isolation pretty much mirrored my own.) When Leonard sang Where Is Love? in one of his albums, it reflected my inner being totally.

 

I ought to go through my literally hundreds of journals now and glean what’s best in them. I started journaling fifty years ago this year. If I go through a year’s worth each month, I bet I could come up with “the best of Kris”. Now that I’m older and wiser, I might even be able to shine heretofore unseen light on my earliest pondering…

 

But I might be so embarrassed by the earliest journals (as I was by the reports of meeting Nimoy) that I might run screaming for the exits too! I might have to paste a disclaimer to many of my journals: “That was then. I DID grow up! Forgive me!!!”

 

Yeah, that could happen, too…

 

I will never know unless I open them up and take a look inside.

 

There are more than 200 of them…

 

Gads, what an undertaking!

 

Memory Lane: Glorious …

 

And its exact opposite: Inglorious!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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