RIP: James Doohan

My "Scotty" story: One weekend in the '80s, while walking around Baltimore aimlessly as I was wont to do, I came across one of those minor Sci-fi comic book / etc conventions. Having never been, I paid a few bucks and checked it out. Group sessions on Dr. Who, Star Trek that sort of thing. At one point I was just standing there checking it all out and was kinda shaking my head at the costumed geeks. I felt a prescense standing next to me. A rather big prescense - a portly tallish gentleman in a "Members Only"jacket with silver-specked hair and a mustache. He saw me shaking my head and said, "yeah, I'm only here because I'm renovating my kitchen." I was like, huh? and then did a double take, it was "Scotty" and he had a big grin on his face. He apparently sensed that I was out of place. He realized I knew who he was and so I said, "yeah?" and he goes, "yeah, the last convention paid for my son's college..." I shook his hand and that's the second to last convention I went to (I went to San Diego's famous Comic Con in the late '90s to get a Dan Clowes autograph).

RIP, Mr. Doohan.