TNG: NEW GROUND

Today I packed lots and lots of boxes and cleaned out our kitchen cabinets and sorted through our closets. (If you're new here and don't know what I'm talking about--we're moving in less than a week) I also managed to watch three episodes of Star Trek: TNG, including "New Ground."

"New Ground" is all about Worf getting to know his son, Alexander, who's got some issues. Alexander had been living with Worf's adoptive parents but had become a little too much for them to handle--especially because he was a great big liar and pretty disobedient all around. These facts came as an unending source of embarrassment to Worf who was mortified by the fact that his son might steal toy dinosaurs and then lie to his teacher about it. It doesn't help that Worf doesn't know anything about Alexander. When he takes the little Q-tip-head to school, Worf can't even come up with Alexander's birthday. It takes a whole episode, a ship-wide disaster, and a pair of highly endangered animals almost burning to death to bring the pair together.

Like Alexander, I was a little adrift as a kid. When I was nine, I moved in with my dad (something I've written about here before) and we were relative strangers. He took me to the local elementary school to enroll and didn't know my birthdate or the last school I'd gone to or what my grades were like or any of the stuff a parent typically knows about. Six months and then a year went by and I knew my dad a lot better. I knew he loved SciFi and video games--just like me. I knew he didn't have any real idea how to cook or keep a tidy house--just like me. After a while, we got to know each other pretty well.

I lived with my dad off and on through elementary and middle school and spent all of high school with him. It's been a long time since I first made a place for myself in his life. We've changed a lot since then. We've gone through good times and bad together and every year at the end of January he sends me an email saying, "Your birthday's sometime this week, right?" And I smile because it is and even if he hasn't got it exactly right, he's a lot closer than he was twenty years ago.