July 20th marked the 40th anniversary of the first Lunar Landing. Shortly thereafter I experienced a lunar landing of my own. I gave a tour to 28 thirteen year olds.
The tour started out with the usual cacophony. The kids laughed, quacked, and shouted expletives. I was feeling confident that this would be like every other tour I’d given to teenagers; the usual controlled chaos.
The mood turned abruptly when the students realized the tour might actually be educational. In an effort to keep the kids engaged I will often ask them to finish my statements on historical facts. This it usually met with an eagerness to shout the right answer. My first...
“...and that is where sextant Robert Newman hung the two lanterns as instructed by Paul Revere indicating one if by land, two if by...”
Silence. Nothing. Not a sound spare for the slight echo of the wind down a long vacant hall. Our ‘descent’ into deep space had begun.
They must not have heard me, I thought, scrambling for an explanation. Undeterred, I made another attempt.
“The USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world. Also, known as....”
No Old Glory, no Old Yeller, something... anything. Again, nothing.
I looked in my rear view mirror to see staring back at me, the starkness of craters and desolation. I was as awestruck as I would have been if I had actually landed on the moon.
I realized I “had a possible abort situation to contend with, but our procedure throughout the preparation phase was to always try to keep going as long as we could so that we could bypass these types of problems.” (Armstrong) So, I forged ahead unrelenting as I spouted off facts about the history that belonged to by this big group of stupid.
Alas, we arrived at the Charles. That dirty water had become a venerable desert oasis. Three, Two, One... splashdown!!!!
I am not a religious woman but, when we splashed down there was a hope in me that the waters of the Charles might somehow serve to cleanse and rejuvenate my defeated spirit. Sadly, I knew it was not to be when, from the back deck of the duck I heard,
“Are there alligators in this water?”
Word of the Day
quaranteen (kwawr uhn teen)
-noun
a strict isolation imposed on teenagers to prevent the spread of stupidity