Adolescent memory of the week
posted by davel on September 5, 2001
In the spirit of Phil's record of the week, I will provide y'all with a weekly peek into my psyche. Lets begin with the Doctor...
It started in 4th grade at Wake Forest Elementary School in North Carolina. It was my first year at the magnet school, and I quickly made friends with David Kalat, who told me, every night at 6:00pm on channel 13 there was this cool show from England about a time travelling... uh...guy. It started pretty casually, but by the end of 5th grade, I was creating an audio tape library of every episode (my parents refused to shell out the dough for a betamax), buying Dr.Who Monthly (and forcing my dad to take them to his work where he would make photocopies of about 30 earmarked photos a week -- he must of been real popular at the office), and even making pledges to PBS because I was certain that if I didn't give them my money, it would be the end of the good Doctor.
This infatuation with the time traveller (and Romana - what a hotty!) reached a peak in 7th grade, when David K and I found out about an upcoming Dr.Who convention. We only had three months to get ready, and get ready we did! David K quickly bugged his mom into knitting us 12foot long multi-hued scarves, and we bought the rest of our costumes at the St. Vincet DePaul. We studied up on our Dr.Who trivia, and even made a stop action super8 movie about the Daleks. The actual day of the convention was nerd heaven! I managed to stuff in about 8hrs of video watching, and greatly expanded my collection of Dr.Who paraphenalia. The highlight of the day was meeting Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor. I'm sure he was as excited as I was. By far the most gratifying aspect of the convention was the fact that I was walking around with a big scarf, floppy hat, and hideous brown overcoat, and no one was trying to beat my ass for it. As a matter of fact, I was amongst family. Everywhere I looked, there were nerds engaged in the orgy of Dr.Who-ness. Fat (plenty of fat),skinny, old and young-we all had one thing in common.
A few months after that, my parents decided that North Carolina was too rural for our family, and they moved us back to Texas. No one at DeWitt Perry Middle School watched Dr.Who. After a few ass kickings, I soon forgot who the Doctor was.