You have all probably heard that Leonard Nimoy died today. I am strangely affected by the death of any of the main cast of the original Star Trek series. I think it is because that series figured so prominently in my childhood. It's an eerie, creepy feeling to watch those you admired (even if you really only admired the characters they portrayed) as a child age and pass away. As kids we tend to believe we are immortal, and that those we look up to are immortal. As we get older, our mortality begins to dawn on us, and it becomes most poignant, I think, at middle-age (and, I'm sure, beyond) when the world of our youth -- both ourselves and what we knew -- begins to wrinkle and sag and gray.

It is not until I am confronted with the power of death and decay that I realize the power the world of my youth had and continues to have over me. "Oh, be careful little eyes what you see .... Oh, be careful little ears what you hear ...." is so very prudently wise, even portentious, and a warning as sagacious as the tale of "The Spider and the Fly".

I'm not saying Star Trek was a bad influence, or I should have avoided it, I'm just saying once something enters the mind, it is nigh impossible to make it leave, and what enters the mind, enters the soul. What enters the soul effects who we are.

Leonard Nimoy did live long, and by almost any account, seems to have prospered. May we all be so fortunate.

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Good grief ... if I had that reaction to Nimoy's death, what will happen to me when Shatner beams out?