Televisions were much smaller long ago in the bygone era of 1993. Reception was much spottier, too, and the sound quality was not nearly so … Dolby surround. You might have to fiddle with your antennae to get the picture to stand still in 1993. Some of you might say, “That was the year I was born,” and I will scoff, because surely there can be no creatures as young as you. But I digress. Our technologies may have been a shadow of your current, twenty years sleeker and more intuitive devices, but we knew touch-screens and Google Glass-ware were in our future. They were there already, inhabiting our fuzzy screens as all of us tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not all of us, but at least three eleven-year-old girls, drawn together by our lack of athleticism, scholarliness and ability to read social cues. Glued to the television each week: I, with the thick glasses and mouth-crank speech impediment, Sarah the heavyset and asthmatic, and Deena, tiny, black and soft spoken. We founded our own Starfleet against the specter of advancing algebra and well-dressed children who seemed to sniff out our thrift store clothes.
