I know there are many James Doohan fans that were in mourning last week. I did not watch Star Trek regularly, so do not have a lot to say about Scottie’s passing other than to offer my condolences. He seemed liked an awfully nice character, if I’m remembering correctly.

I hope his fans won’t be offended that his death has had me thinking about one of my early crushes. When I was about 9 or 10 year old I developed a crush on Captain Kirk. Let me state this a little more concisely. I didn’t watch Star Trek. I had a crush on a doll. My neighbor’s Captain Kirk action figure doll. William Shatner was quite a beautiful sight to behold in those early years and the doll looked just like him.

If you don’t know this already, you should know that I married my first love. Lucky, lucky me to have found my soulmate so early in life.

I’ll have you know, though, that my love life has been very varied and interesting. Even a little quirky.

That got your attention? Yes?

I am talking about my crushes. My heart has been captured by many notable men. There are all the obvious ones. I’m talking about the Hollywood stars. Most of these have fallen out of my graces by now. You know the type: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Mel Gibson, the list goes on. They are no longer on MY list. Do I need to explain?

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find a much more interesting story.

I must have been about 8 or 9 when I fell for Mickey Rivers. We were living in New Jersey. It was the middle to late 1970s. The Yankees played the Dodgers in the Wpr;d Series for about three years in a row. I remember rushing home from school to catch the games. Mickey. Well Mickey could run. I don’t know what it was about this, but I watched him run those bases and fell for him hard. He was just so…fast. I think I wrote a fan letter to him. Eventually he was traded to the Angels. I remember trying to follow his career after that, but we eventually drifted apart. I visited his fan website today. He didn’t mention me anywhere on it. How strange.

This next one can’t exactly be put in the crush category. I was too young to see it that way. I must have been about five. One of my favorite uncles took a big group of us cousins to see Snow White in the movie theater. When it was over he asked each of us which our favorite characters was. Everyone else named one of the dwarfs. Who did I like? The prince. I remember this very well. I remember watching the scene when the prince first sings to Snow White. I remember being struck by him but being too young to understand that these feelings might be romantic. My uncle thought my answer was hilarious and for years and years always asked me if I had found my prince yet.

Does anyone remember what year the movie, The Sting, came out? Someone took me to see it when I was a kid and I fell hard for Robert Redford. In fact, I was sure I discovered him. I remember describing to someone the scene where he gets all spiffed up at the barbers and gets a new suit and then flashes this smile. That was the moment. That smile. I remember trying to figure out how old he would be when I was old enough to get married. By the time I was eighteen, I was more of a Paul Newman type. I’m sure Mr. Redford was disgusted with me for making him wait like that for nothing.

And then there was the summer of Tom Smothers. I was about 12 or so. My family and I were staying in an amazing house in Big Sur. The house was owned by some friends of my parents. In their record collection was a Smothers Brothers album. I listened to it over and over until I knew it by heart. I’m pretty sure that I developed a crush on Tom from this album alone, before I saw him on television.

We’re skipping ahead more than a decade later. I’m married and in graduate school, studying for my comps. The A & E channel airs the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. Sigh. Is it not strange that so many of us fell so hard. I always have had an attraction to the character of Mr. Darcy. And I do like Colin Firth in other films (I could do without those boring Disney movies though). But Colin Firth AS Mr. Darcy. Well, just….(sigh). It wasn’t just the wet shirt scene that did it, it was the way he looked at Lizzie, and the kind smile he flashed occasionally.

The Mr. Darcy crush was probably my most annoying crush, I’m presuming, from my husband’s perspective. I believe that more than once I actually said the words, “Mr. Darcy wouldn’t have done that.” Yikes. Okay, I was a little nostalgic for eighteenth/nineteenth-century manners and civiliy. The ironic thing is Mr. Darcy was supposed to be the one who said all the WRONG things.

These days I really only have one extramarital crush and my husband is 100% supportive. I think I love Jon Stewart. I like his looks, but its the combination of brains, humor, passion, and integrity that makes him very sexy to me.

Looking back on all these crushes, it is hard to find some common denominator. There is something that brings them all together, though. There is a little piece of each of the things that attracted me to these men in my husband. Like Mickey Rivers, my husband has great legs. (He was a soccer player and I sure did see a lot of those legs when he began to turn my head.) He is kind and goofy like Tom Smothers. He’s got Hollywood (or better than Hollywood) looks, like Robert Redford. He’s got the politics of Jon Stewart. As much as I gave him a hard time for not being Darcy, he loves me like Darcy loved Lizzie–he loves my feistiness, though there are times I am sure he could do without this part of me very happily.

Let’s see, who’s left? Captain Kirk? Well perhaps my husband doesn’t have much in common with William Shatner, but that was just a doll, so we’ll say it doesn’t count.

And the prince? Well,I was not there to witness this, but when my uncle (my crazy and at the time very intimidating uncle) met my husbnad for the first time, the first thing he said to him was “So you’re the prince, huh?”

I’ll just say that it was and is so very clear that he is my prince in so many ways.

And in our little castle, there is room for Jon Stewart. We’ll call him a sexy court jester.