All I Really Need t Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek.

Reader's Digest this month had a fascinating take on the old...

"All I Really Need t Know I  Learned from Watching Star Trek"

Always stop to help someone in distress. And never wear a red shirt to work.
By Dave Marinaccio, as told to Lisa Goff

It's a fact: Every situation one might ever confront in life has already been faced by the crew of the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701.

Throughout their long voyage, they've learned how to treat their friends, pick up girls, get ahead on the job, and bandage wounded silicon-based life-forms. So when I started my own advertising company, in the 1990s, I made it a point to follow Captain Kirk's example. The first thing I did was to learn to trust the people who work for me. After all, I can't fly this ship myself. Like Kirk, if someone is in trouble, I'm quick to help him — someday I'll be the one on the business end of a Salt Vampire or in trouble with Tribbles, needing a helping hand.

No matter what the bad guys throw my way, I try to end each day with a laugh. If nothing else, it confuses the opposition. Should I encounter a strange new world, I explore it, even if I have to boldly go where no man has gone before. One other thing I learned from watching Star Trek: Never, ever wear a red shirt to work. The aliens always shoot the guy in the red shirt first.

Dave Marinaccio is the author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek (Crown Publishers).

In my living room I have a drawing like this and one with Jean-Luc Picard and Number One.  They are really terrific, done by a family friend Ray Hennesay!  He had done one of Cat Stevens that I got but it was stolen by a Rivaldi girl with terribly bad manners.