Star Trek Was the Gateway to Humanism for This Latchkey Kid
Boldly Learning What Was Missing at Church
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Like many Gen Xers, I was a latchkey kid. What does that mean? Both of my parents had to work outside the home to make ends meet. When I came home after school, I had to entertain myself until they got home. Paying someone to watch me every day for those couple of hours would have been too expensive. And so, that job fell to the television.
Looking back, I must say that the strangest part of the whole thing was that they didn’t give me a house key. They must have feared I’d lose it, and I am sure I would have. When I came home, I had to enter the side yard through a gate. Then I had to crawl through a dog door installed in a side door in the garage. Once inside the garage, I could retrieve the house key from a massive toolbox on my dad’s workbench.
I realize this means of entry may sound silly. But my dad’s toolbox was an excellent hiding place for a key. Nobody robbing the place could have moved it. And nobody would have bothered to open all the tiny drawers containing nails and screws. The only flaw was that I had to remember to put the key back where I’d found it.
My Babysitter the Television
What did I do during those hours of being home alone? It depended on the weather. If it wasn’t raining, I’d hop on my bike and meet up with a friend or two. Parental supervision wasn’t much of a thing in those days, so not having any wasn’t a big deal.
If the weather was bad, I’d stay put and watch as many forbidden TV shows as I could cram into the time I had. My mom had a long list of shows I couldn’t watch, and I was fuzzy about the reasons why many of them were on the list. Most are now considered classics from the era.
There was no internet or cable TV. We received exactly 3 TV stations from the antenna on the roof. That meant I didn’t get to be too picky about what I watched. It was in this context that I watched every episode of the original Star Trek series. This was not a forbidden show, but I loved it anyway.
Humanism in Outer Space
It would be several years before I’d be able to tell you what humanism was. I had no…
