WIL WHEATON Has Star Trek Memories

"ID, please." The guard said.

I pulled my driver's license out of my wallet, and 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.

"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.

"Okay," he said, and gave me directions to an area on the lot where I'd never been before.

I locked up my car, and walked toward the dressing rooms. Other than the addition of a back lot, Paramount hadn't changed in any substantial way since I was on the show, and my thoughts drifted as I walked down those familiar streets on auto-pilot.

That's where I met Eddie Murphy when I was sixteen . . . Hey! I crashed a golf cart there when I was fifteen . . . There's the mail room . . . There's stage six, where the bridge set started out . . . I almost got up the courage to kiss that girl at the Christmas party on that stage in . . . there's the stage where Shatner told me, "I'd never let a kid come onto my bridge" . . . this street feels exactly the way it did when I worked here . . . here's where my trailer used to be . . .

I stopped, and tears filled my eyes -- tears of joy: It's so good to be here, mingled with tears of sadness and regret: Why didn't this happen years ago?

Because I wasn't ready for it to happen. I walked a few more steps, and looked into the foyer that led into stages 8 and 9. Enterprise lives there now. At least they kept the stage in the family.