A few months into eighth grade, I changed schools for three weeks, then moved to a tiny town (Elgin, population 700 at the time). Justine and I lost contact with each other, and my fanatical obsession with "Battlestar Galactica" was slowly eroded and replaced with things like Atari's Megamania, Rick Springfield ("Hey, that's Zac!!!") as Dr. Noah Drake on "General Hospital", Jon-Erik Hexum, "The A-Team" (okay, so that Templeton Peck fella DOES look a bit familiar...), M-TV, and---you guessed it---Duran Duran.

It was good, though, that I had that year or so of total imaginary playing, I think. It was the year when a crooked stick turned into a lazer gun for shootouts in the backyard among the falling leaves. When odd bits of "consumables" in the school cafeteria were sniffed, and then termed "mushies". The year that school was cancelled for a few days because of an amazing blizzard, and we recreated "The Gun On Ice Planet Zero", and threw snowballs at the side of the house, trying to hit Cylons, until we were told to stop. When we used the manual alphabet to communicate important fleet messages to each other during Friday morning Mass. When there was a week or two when we had convinced ourselves that Sr. Malachy, the school principal, was actually Imperious Leader's sister, sent to destroy mankind from a convent that was actually a Cylon basestar. (She was finally identified as the long-lost sister of Baltar, and the Cylons knew nothing about her. She DID kind of resemble John Colicos...)

And, of course, the year when I first began to realize I was growing into a woman, and learning to kiss, and flirt, and hold conversations (albeit one-sided) with a boy by practicing on that well-worn pinup of Dirk.

If ever I have the chance to meet him, I'll have to remember to thank him.