It was nineteen hundred and seventy-one, I was seven years old, sitting in the back seat of the family car. I was in the middle, hunched up as far forward as I could get so I could peer between the front seats at the drive-in movie screen.

(If you heard that in Dustin Hoffman’s Little Big Man voice, fist bump)

It was a double feature: The Andromeda Strain and Colossus: The Forbin Project. If you haven’t seen them, do. But make sure it’s the 1971 version of The Andromeda Strain. The recent remake is nothing like the original.

I say that because the original Andromeda Strain was hard science fiction. It was intense and exciting, but it was no action-adventure movie. It’s about a team of scientists in a secret government underground lab trying to contain a deadly space-borne pathogen outbreak in remote New Mexico. Even by today’s standards, this movie stands apart.

When we used to go to the drive-in, I would never stay awake through even one movie, but that night I sat in that back seat, riveted by both. I credit The Andromeda Strain for awakening the scientist in me.

The script called for the characters to use scientific methodology and theories of the time to solve the problem as their real-world counterparts would. This is what I mean by hard science fiction. Real science in really good stories.

The very next year I had a similar experience. In 1972 Kung Fu premiered, and again I was riveted. My imagination was captured, not so much by the martial arts, but by the whole aspect of being a Shaolin monk.

My favorite scenes were Kane’s memories of his time at the temple, especially with Master Po, the blind monk who called Kane “Grasshopper”. I was getting a glimpse of a spirituality, a way of life, quite different from the one I was being taught.

Unbeknownst to me at the time (but knownst now) I would come to rely on both science and an alternative spirituality to try to make life work.

I come from what I recently learned is a multi-generational disfunctional family. I was abused, physically and emotionally, by one parent and neglected by the other. I was bullied and beaten by my older sister and my parents wouldn’t stop her. And for long periods of time I was I was left in the care of grandparents, aunts and uncles, or strangers.

We had moved an average of once a year by the time I graduated high school. The longest we stayed any place was five years. I went to three different schools in the third grade and four different high schools.

From about third grade on, in each new town, at each new school I became the target of bullies. Kids I had never met would come up to me wanting to fight, and I had no idea why. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I was the nerdy, sensitive kid who just wanted people to like me. I didn’t want to fight and no one had ever taught me to defend myself so I lost the most of the time.

Which put me at the bottom of the social ladder. I was the one picked last for teams, the one they played practical jokes on, pushed around in the halls, and cornered on the playground.

In junior high I passed a note to a popular girl asking if she would go with me. To this day I have no idea what I was thinking but the result was predictable. I was laughed at, ridiculed and mocked by the popular kids for the rest of the year. The bullies used this as an excuse to renew their attacks on me (not that they needed one). I began skipping class or pretending to be sick to avoid the humiliation and abuse.

My parents divorced when I was fourteen and I went to live with dad. By the time I graduated high school, though, I was living with my Grandmother for the fifth time. Dad was working a construction job in another state and I hadn’t seen him in months. He managed to make it back, the day after graduation, and took me to the Guadelupe river in central Texas to celebrate.

It was there my father told me that, regarding me, he had only one plan and that was to get me through high school. After that, he confessed, he had nothing. No plan, no options, no advice. Which shouldn’t have been surprising since he had never had much to offer in the way of advice. When I would go to him with a problem he seemed to have no idea what to say and usually wound up offering a feeble joke.

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