“I called her and I said, ‘Hey, this is Jimmy Doohan. Scotty of Star Trek. I’m doing a convention in Indianapolis, and I want to see you there.'” he explained. “I saw her. Boy, I’m telling you — I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was definitely suicide. Somebody had to help her, somehow. And, obviously, she wasn’t going to the right people.”
Doohan told the woman about each surrounding area convention (and some in nearby states) that he would be at and said he wanted to see her at each.
“That went on for two or three years, maybe 18 times,” he said. “And all I did was talk positive things to her. And then all of a sudden — nothing. I didn’t hear anything, and I had no idea what was really happening to her because I never really saved her address. Eight years later, I get a letter saying, ‘I do want to thank you so much for what you did for me, I just got my master’s degree in electronic engineering.'”
Watch James recount it here [2:02] | Article Source here
Check in on the people you love. You never know what someone is going through and just being there can help way more than you might know. Trust me as someone who doesn’t have anyone there.
Live long and prosper, friends 🖖
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This has been your daily dose of feels.
Have a great day and be kind to one another <3
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
We’re both crying
We’re all crying
The damn Klingons aren’t shedding a single bloody tear!
Thanks Stamets
💙
He was also a badass pilot:
Although he was never actually a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Doohan was once labelled the “craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force”. In the late spring of 1945, on Salisbury Plain north of RAF Andover, he slalomed a plane between telegraph poles “to prove it could be done”, earning himself a serious reprimand. (Various accounts cite the plane as a Hurricane or a jet trainer; however, it was an Auster Mark IV.)
“to prove it could be done”
100% Starfleet
He was giving her all she’s got.
It’s a bit like how the Asgard need help from humans in SG1 because no rational alien race would think to put an explosive behind some metal pellets and make that an infantry weapon.
Also be nice to strangers, you never know what they’re going through!
I can’t imagine pushing someone over the edge just because I was short on patience one day. The thought really bothers me as I’m not a patient person.
I’m sure you haven’t.
I spent the first half of my 20s homeless. There’s that saying about how if you want to see what a person is really like then see how they treat the people under them? It’s true and a lot of people are way too comfortable with being bad people. I’m not talking about people who nervously avoid homeless folks or are afraid of making eye contact. That’s a whole other discussion. A sad one as well, but not what I’m talking about. I mean people who are just actively nasty. Kicking us or throwing stuff at us or calling the police saying we had a gun so we get the shit beat out of us in the middle of the night. One dude offered me a sandwich when he saw me dumpster diving. He said to stay in the area and I was desperate. I hadn’t eaten in days. Dude left and came back with a gas station sandwich that had clearly been previously unwrapped. Encouraged me to eat it. I opened it and the guy had put dog shit in the sandwich. I refused and he started to get aggressive but other people were around and started watching. That made him uncomfortable and he left.
Have a hard time trusting people since being homeless. I wonder why. But I do give everyone the benefit of the doubt and try to be as nice as I can. Do I fuck up and fail? Yep. Do I try and fix it when I do? Yep. It’s all you can do. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, true, but the needs of the few still matter. I try not to forget that. I have a feeling you do the same on that front.
If you’re actively noticing that you have a problem with your patience then you are already better than a LOT of people. You notice a problem and you’re trying to fix it. A terrifying amount of people have issues similar to that but don’t care. Just say fuck it and let the consequences ride. If you’re thinking about it then you’re thinking about it because you’re a good person. There’s no way you’d get to the point of pushing someone over the edge because you’re not capable of that far. Why? Because you a good person yo. Go do a “I’m a good person” dance. You’ve earned one.
That’s fucking awful! I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Well here’s something sad in a funny way. Out of all the traumatic shit I’ve gone through, being homeless is pretty low on the list.
I’ve gone through so much at that this point it’s whatever. I’m a product of what I went through. I have no idea who I’d be if I didn’t but I doubt he’d be half as interesting. I’m okay with that trade off.
Go do your fuckin “I’m a good person” dance or I’ll get Morn to supervise.
I am sorry with what you have gone through. No I repeat, no one deserves to be treated like you were and I am assuming a lot of homeless are.
No one deserves to but we do nonetheless. That’s life at this point. “It is what it is.” Really need that tattooed on my wrist at this point.
Can’t change the past. Can only look forward and try and help make sure it doesn’t happen to others. C’est la vie. He somehow said with terrible French pronunciation. Despite it being a text message.
One dude offered me a sandwich when he saw me dumpster diving. He said to stay in the area and I was desperate. I hadn’t eaten in days. Dude left and came back with a gas station sandwich that had clearly been previously unwrapped. Encouraged me to eat it. I opened it and the guy had put dog shit in the sandwich. I refused and he started to get aggressive but other people were around and started watching. That made him uncomfortable and he left.
Honestly, what stops me from going crazy on assholes is thinking of everything I’d lose if I did. But if I’m already homeless and you offer me a sandwich with dog shit inside I don’t care, I’m beating you until I crush your skull. You don’t play around with cornered rats. You really have to be one of the worst people on the planet to do that, I’m doing a favor to humanity by removing you from it.
The one thing I value more than anything else is my freedom to move and do what I want. Am I limited by a thousand other things such as money or physical disability? Yes Sir. But my freedom is precious. Won’t trade anything for it.
To add to this - sometimes, people are being shitty because the world has been so shitty to them. You can’t balance it out alone, but if every one of us were 5% more gentle with people we come across, there would be a ripple effect like this world has never seen.
Want a startrek future? It’s going to take tiny steps from all of us to get there.
Hurt people hurt people
It’s a phrase I learned due to the toxicity of the relationship with my ex.
With great fandom comes great responsibility.
People like James having existed feels like salt in the wound to the fact that the vast, vast majority of humans I’ve observed in my 3 and a half decades act like Feral Ferengi, exclusively interested in “what’s in it for me and who can I exploit to get it?”
As I age, the humanity of Star Trek comes to feel as fantastical as the sci-fantasy in Star Wars.
Just said in another comment but I was homeless for half my 20s. Also had an extremely unpleasant childhood and equally unpleasant teenage years. Honestly it’s only been the past 5-6 years that things are sort of okay. Either way I’ve seen a disgusting amount of what humanity is actually like and honestly… yeah. If most people don’t act like Ferengi then they just act indifferent. Not sure which hurts most, if I’m honest.
Ferengis judged “Hoomons” for being worse than them. Ferengis never had slavery, and while they exploted eachother their hypercapitalist society was still more fair than ours (if you ignore the sexism)
Did they ever follow up with how much of an impact Quark’s mom had? I remember all the drama in ds9 but I don’t know if it ever changed much.
Yes if I remembet Quarks mom helped achieve
nearequality, where women were allowed to do as much as men could
Great guy, but whole fuck sending multiple suicide notes to a celebrity you like is… yikes.
I mean shit dude, sometimes these people literally have no one else to go to. There was a super scary example of it on a Chuggaconroy video where a comment was like “thanks for the memories and for making my days a bit better” and everyone figured it out, and like every single comment - including the creator - told him not to and they succeeded. But still it was fucking insane to see on a YouTube video.
2 things.
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@SneakyWeasel@lemmy.world has a point. I used to work at a call center a long time ago and someone called in to tell us they were committing suicide. I didn’t get the call but I was close to the guy who did. The person who called was someone who had been abandoned by their family and had nothing and no one. They were living on their own for years and had exhausted themselves to the point of wanting to die. However they had a desperate need to be remembered by someone so they called the only place they ever regularly called. No one in their life but needed someone to know they existed so they called the one regular number they knew. Does it make sense? No. Not really. But that’s pain. Not everything is going to make sense.I can identify with this if I’m honest. I don’t want to live but no one really knows who I am or would notice if I died. I’m not at the point of phoning up strangers point but I get it. The isolation and loneliness hurts more than anything else.
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Not all suicide notes are obvious. I sent one to someone in the past and they had no idea. I also sent another message to a DnD player I’ve been playing with for years just saying I loved him and he thought that was a suicide note. It might have been a super obvious one. It might have been something more subtle that James just recognized. Or it could have been just an out-and-out suicide note. We don’t know for sure. Most suicide notes though are not that obvious so I’m inclined to lean towards James just recognizing it after all the hell he went through.
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Just think, this was a guy who was at D-Day. And the best thing he considers in his life was saving a young woman’s life through nothing more than words and a promise.
Well there’s a little faith restoration for the day.
One might even say that said ‘faith’ is from, perhaps, the heart?
