Treknobabble is a continuing series of columns written by uber-Trekkie Reed Farrington in anticipation of the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

Late Autumn evening, sometime prior to 9/11. The Rainbow Bridge at the U.S./Canada border. An American customs officer motions with his hand for me to lower my window. Normally, I talk to the officer in the booth, but the long vehicle line-up has caused a change in the routine. Temporarily disoriented, I play with my self-repaired window switch to lower my car window. I think to myself he must be wondering why I’m fumbling about. He must be thinking, “Perhaps he’s nervous because he has something to hide.” When the window finishes its automated descent, the officer starts his oft-spoken spiel.

“How long across the border?”

I glance across to the clock in my car, mentally calculate how many hours I’ve been in the States, and say, “Since this morning.”

“What were you doing today?”

“Shopping.”

“What were you shopping for?”

“Oh, Star Trek toys,” I mumble, and then I think I should elaborate since he’s probably wondering how I could have spent all day shopping for Star Trek toys. “I went to various stores all the way to Buffalo and back.”

He stares at me behind out-of-style mirrored shades, and as he’s probably trained to do, he tries to find a hole in my story. “What stores did you go to?”

“Um, the Outlet Mall on… (I temporarily forget the name of the street) in Niagara Falls, MediaPlay, um… oh, Summit Park Mall, and”

He interrupts, perhaps suspecting that I’m simply rattling off names that I’ve seen on signs. “How many stores are there in Summit Park Mall?”

I am the worst estimator ever. My mind wanders back twenty or so years when I took a driver’s education course. A policeman was visiting and randomly quizzing the students with questions which had answers not to be found in the drivers’ manual.

So he looks me in the eye, and asks, “How long is one of the segments in the broken line dividing the lanes of a highway?”

Mentally visualizing the highway through the front windshield of my dad’s car, I answer, “A foot?”

“Young man, I think you’re driving way too fast on the highway. The correct answer is twelve feet.”

Twelve feet!?!?

Forward twenty or so years back to the Rainbow Bridge, and I think, “I wish I had paid more attention to the Summit Park Mall billboard, because the billboard did have on it the number of stores in the mall.”

Anyway, I mentally visualize walking through the mall and count the number of stores in my head, and thinking that I’m mentally visualizing walking too slowly, I stop counting at ten and double the number, “Twenty?”

“Pull over to the side, please.”

“Oh, wait, did you mean open stores? Because there were a lot of stores closed down…” He had already walked off to the side. In my defense, there were a lot of vacant stores in this mall that had past its prime. But in retrospect, I probably should have said one-hundred and twenty or so.

After I pulled over and showed him the Star Trek toys, and receipts, he merrily let me go on my way.

End of story.

Epilogue:

Living near the border of America allows me access to more Star Trek stuff than is available in Canada; however, when Playmates stopped producing Star Trek toys, Star Trek merchandise stopped flowing and trips across the border would end up leaving me empty-handed. But thanks to Art Asylum’s distribution channels, I’ve been managing to get a fix now and then in Canada.

One quick memory. I remember years ago on a trip across the border, I declared my purchase of Star Trek toys on the way back. The customs officer smiled and tapped his sideburns. They were pointed.

*A note about the usage of this word. My distinction between a Trekker and a Trekkie is that a Trekker is someone who likes watching Star Trek while a Trekkie is a Trekker who also buys Star Trek related merchandise. In other words, a Trekkie is a Star Trek junkie. A psychologist has mentioned that Star Trek fans deprived of Star Trek often display withdrawal symptoms. Case closed.