Channeling Capt. Kirk

"I'm from Iowa, I only work in outer space."
--Captain James T. Kirk, "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"

I wish I had been bold when the construction worker challenged me at the bridge site (River, IV).
But I was unprepared and I acted like a ninny Woody-Allenesque character.
I should have acted like Captain Kirk.

I've been watching the first season (1966) of Star Trek on DVD.
When I was a teenager, I was enamored of Mr. Spock, a half-Vulcan struggling to repress his unwelcome human emotions.
This looked like a great plan for surviving high school. I embraced it, with negligible results. (He didn't succeed all that well either, which was part of his attraction.)

Watching the shows for the first time some thirty years later, I laugh to think I ever identified with the cool and remote Spock. I am much more like Capt. Kirk, embarrassing as that is to admit, given that he is a big lummocks who emotes all over the place. But he is never embarrassed by his omnivorous appetites or too timid to do something, even if it's the wrong thing. Or the ridiculous one.

I've spent too much time trying to channel Spock. It's time to claim my inner Captain Kirk.
If I'd been tapped into that gutsy and hammy side of myself, when the guy in the truck asked, "Can I help you?" even though he obviously didn't really mean it, I would have said yes!
Maybe he would have given me a tour of the site or answered some more interesting questions. OTOH, he quite likely had been sent by the bad Klingon Empire...