Highlander and Lemur: A Memoir Revisited

I wrote a memoir about my future husband for a college class a million years ago. I went looking for it today, hoping it contained the story of how we met.

I understand how Tolstoy felt, reading through his old stuff. This piece is poorly written and does a piss-poor job of describing me and my Lemur. For that reason, I can’t post it verbatim, but I’ll give you the gist.

I dated a sociopath for two-and-a-half years, during the transition period from high school to college. I went away to college and distanced myself soundly from my classmates. Don’t feel too bad – I wasn’t close to them, anyway.

I dropped my bad-habit boyfriend in February of my second semester. (Actually, he dumped me, and then he tried to kill me… I’m the hero of my own story. Work with me.) I didn’t have friends and I was too young to go out to the bars, the only nightlife surrounding campus.

I remember spending hours watching people below my dorm room window. Bored after the first three days, I spent my first weekend alone watching a James Bond marathon. I half-heartedly watched the good (Connery) ones, and channel-surfed through the rest. This was how I caught a glimpse of Adrian Paul. This was no coincidence. That weekend, at least three channels had episodes of Highlander on at different times. By the end of the night, I was hooked on the hunk with sexy long hair and questionable European accent. He and the show entertained me enough to drop Bond entirely.

In my classes the following week, I thought I had a secret. I found a great new show I loved. I resisted the temptation to sing Highlander‘s praises until class with my friend RJ. I couldn’t hold back: I told him about the most awesome show on television.

“Hey, I started watching that show, too!” He said. Then he told me about the merchandise. Before the “Darryl Dixon Fan Club” t-shirts, before “Team Vampire” and “Team Werewolf,” or whatever, there was the Highlander merchandise catalog, with everything from swords to books to a collectible card game: Fencing Pokemon. (It was called Highlander: The Card Game, but you get the idea.)

RJ and I bought every memento of the show we could find in our small college town. He had more money, so he collected the cards and t-shirts. I bought the books and started my collection of Queen CDs. Yes, I’ve been a Queen fan most of my life, but I didn’t own a CD until Highlander.

Once hooked on the show, we thought we should immerse ourselves in Highlander history, by watching the original movies starring Christopher Lambert. We were unable to rent Highlander for our Friday movie night, so we settled for Highlander 2.

RJ was already married in college, so no romantic interest. However, the night of our first movie event, he invited his friend, Lemur. The reason for this was twofold: his wife is the kind of woman who thinks women should not be friends with married men, so I couldn’t just come over on my own. The second: they were “not” setting us up. (Dude, they were totally setting us up.)

Lemur was friends with RJ much longer than I. He was happy RJ had finally moved on from his Star Wars addiction. The guy who now owns a Sand Trooper uniform once said his buddy spent too much time talking about Star Wars.

Highlander 2 is crap, y’all. Even so, I made a friend that night. The depths of Lemur’s geekdom knows no bounds. He is a font of knowledge about B movies (especially sci-fi and horror), classic video games, and pop culture references. The deeper I went into the realm of unreality, the harder it was to remember how bad things were before I met Lemur, and before I had an escape from the real world.

We’ve been pretty much inseparable since the first weekend. Lemur had me at “What are you doing Sunday? Want to watch the show with me?” He also bought me A Kind of Magic. Anyone who gives the gift of Freddie has a piece of my soul.

That’s all I can salvage from the original memoir. I know, it’s pretty terrible. I’m sure you’re questioning my worth as a romance writer. I don’t blame you. But don’t blame Lemur. Without him, I wouldn’t be here at all.

I also wrote about this in Evolution of a Gamer, Part I, for a different take on the same story.