The Coast News Group
Small Talk

Is husband planning to live ‘long and prosper’?

OK, Trekkies. Help me out here.
I’m pretty sure I am married to a Vulcan. Actually, he’s a lot like Spock, half-human, half-Vulcan, but still … If any of this sounds familiar, you too may know one. Oh, they’re out there.
For starters, we have his absolutely unflappable personality and that he sees all things from an uber-logical standpoint. But I need to confirm that Vulcans tend to collect odd thing, things a human would throw away, then wander off into the wilderness to build stuff.
Well, we know they like to wander off into the wilderness. How much farther into the wilderness can you go than other universes? They live longer than humans and based on how well my husband has aged, that’s a given. He’s so fair of complexion, he’s almost translucent, and I recall Spock being a pale-face. My mother-in-law must have had his pointy ears and arched eyebrows altered at birth.
And remember all that strange food they fancied? My husband will eat anything once, from a stew full of mystery items in the mountains of Viet Nam to sea slug in L.A.’s Chinatown. And he isn’t all that fond of normal human food, like my cooking.
My spouse seemed pretty human at first, but a few years after we were married, he bought an almost unreachable mountainside plot of land in Paso Robles. He then went up there on a regular basis with his odds and ends and built a yurt. Yep. A yurt.
You know, one of those round huts generally favored by Mongolian nomads, and I suspect, Vulcans. According to my research, Vulcans can go for days without water, food or sleep. I did all that the one time I visited the yurt. He also drives to Los Angeles every day to work, which right away would kill a plain human. He never gets enough sleep and he can go a whole day without getting hungry. I can’t go two hours.
But my final proof came when he announced this summer he was building a shack by the Salton Sea. Did I mention that Vulcans evolved from a planet which is mostly desert? And the Salton Sea? Desert. It isn’t a yurt this time, but it is built with more junk from our garage.
Talk about going where no man has gone before. It seems he became intrigued when he heard of the old, deserted military base out there where one can squat free of charge. It must be Vulcan-like to love solitude and strange characters. He has found both in this peculiar settlement of retirees, hoboes and misfits … in the desert.
As soon as I get him to admit he’s part Vulcan, I’m going to insist he teach me how to do a Mind Meld. If nothing else, I need to meld with someone who has a good memory. And I’m going to give him some real grief for not coming clean and using the Vulcan nerve pinch all those times the children needed a time-out.
My search continues and, it is, as Spock would have said, “Most interesting.”