The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton

gave it to him.
    “And where are you going today…” he looked at my license, “Wil?”
    “I’m working on Star Trek ,” I said.
    “ Enterprise or Nemesis ?”
    The Next Generation , I thought.
    “ Nemesis ,” I said. “I play Wesley Crusher.”
    He looked up at me. “Oh my god. You are Wesley Crusher! You look so…”
    Washed up?
    “…grown up.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a long time.”
    “Do you know where to park?”
    “Yeah. But I don’t know where our dressing rooms are.”
    But I do! I do know where our dressing rooms are! They’re trailers on the street in front of stages 8 and 9. Mine is filled with Warhammer 40K figures and GURPS books. It’s right next to Brent’s trailer. It’s 1989, and I’m back. I’m back home.

    When I worked on Nemesis several years ago, returning to Paramount to put on the uniform and immerse myself—if only for a day—in Wesley Crusher’s goofy grin and wide-eyed excitement (I wrote at the time that I couldn’t tell where Wesley ended and I began), it was an emotional experience. I felt genuine regret for not appreciating Star Trek more when I was on the series every day, which morphed into a general regret that when I was a teenager, I acted like…a teenager. Some of Just A Geek is about this, and the catharsis that came from writing it is a large reason why I was able to accept and embrace my small role in the Star Trek universe.
    I went to Paramount last week to go onto our old stages and walk a camera crew through the Guardian of Forever into 1987. I didn’t expect to be particularly emotional. I was wrong.
    I live in a different part of town now, and while it’s faster to go through Silverlake and across Beverly, I wanted to put myself in a place where I’d be most receptive to emotional sense memories, so I added twenty minutes to my drive and went down the 2, up the 5, across Los Feliz and down Western before cutting across Sunset to Van Ness. I took this route every single day, once I got my driver’s license (and a license plate frame on my Prelude, the one that was just a little better than Patrick’s, that said “My other car is the Enterprise”—awesome), and at one time could probably do it with my eyes closed. I told my iPod to shuffle my ’80s Alternative playlist, and after an hour of Boingo, Depeche Mode, OMD, Squeeze, and The Smiths, I was, as they say, really feeling it when I pulled up to the guard gate on Melrose.
    I turned down Only a Lad and rolled down my window. “Hi,” I said, “I’m Wil Wheaton, and I’m going to Stage 24 for the Star Trek documentary.”
    The guard, who was probably in elementary school when I was piloting the Enterprise, nodded.
    “May I see your ID, sir?”
    Though I’m “sir” to a lot of people these days, it was bizarre to hear it in a place where I was used to being “The Kid” or “The Boy.” I pulled it out of my wallet and handed it to him.
    “Okay, you’re all set, Mr. Wheaton,” he said. “Just pull up to the valet there. I’m sure you know your way around here?”
    I smiled. “Yeah, I do.”
    He handed me back my ID and leaned down toward me.
    “We’re not supposed to do this, but I’m a big fan,” he said, conspiratorially. With anyone who really was a big deal in Hollywood, he was probably risking his job.
    “Really?” I said. “You seem a little young for TNG.”
    He grinned. “Not Star Trek , your blog.”
    This took me completely by surprise. I have been so busy with other writing projects that I haven’t been able to give my blog the attention I want. I’ve frequently considered putting it on hiatus for a few months.
    “That,” I said, “is totally awesome. Thank you.”
    He smiled and then looked over his shoulder at the other guards. He turned back to me, nodded tersely, and waved me onto the lot.
    I traded my car for an orange ticket with some numbers on it and headed toward stage 24. A few minutes later, I walked past the Hart building, where