You know how kids construct their image of the outside world from scraps of cartoons and fragments of school assignments, and the rest from imagination? So they get lots of stuff wrong--sewer grates are to keep the alligators out of the streets, whatever day is garbage day on your street is garbage day for the whole world--and growing up is the process of idly mentioning these incorrect suppositions and getting them straightened out by the older and the wiser.
Except, some of these suppositions are so irrelevant and minor that you never bring them up, and they don't get mentioned in a class or conversation for years and years. And then you're thirty, and you are somewhat crushed to find out over Mexican food that no space program--not Canada's or the US's or anyone's--is working towards the goal of building a glass or possibly Pyrex dome on the moon filled with a breathable atmosphere so that people can live there full-time.
!!!
I can't even begin to explain why I thought that was true, or why I am now so sad that it isn't. It's not like I wanted to spend my retirement on the moon...I just thought I'd have the option.
I'll keep drivin' / you keep sleepin'
RR
PS--But the good news is that I've had new horoscopes for the past two days--hooray! Of course, today's includes the line, "This is a powerful move that will make you feel powerful..."
Rebecca Rosenblum...
is a writer and editor who likes a lot of stuff. This is a blog about that stuff, and also her writing. Rebecca is the writer-in-residence at Jean Vanier High School, and was a juror for The Journey Prize 21. Her work has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the Danuta Gleed Award and the National Magazine Award. Her first book of short stories, Once, was published by Biblioasis and was one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. Rebecca's stories are occasionally seen in Canadian periodicals and her second collection, *The Big Dream,* is forthcoming from Biblioasis.
3 comments:
There was a "This American Life" story about this very phenomenon...
It could have been worse, Rebecca. At least you weren't shocked to discover that no, unicorns aren't real. THAT is sadness. There's still hope for the moon colony, after all.
Becky, you were right all along!!!
Nasa is intent on building a lunar outpost in the next ten years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_outpost_(NASA)
http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/1205_Planetary_Society_Welcomes_NASA.html
Don't know if it will be a dome precisely but, yes, people are working on having humans on the moon. I, myself, have been keeping tabs on these developments for years, ever since I read Paula Danziger's classic "This Place Has No Atmosphere"
Don't stop believin' man!
Also I looked up the this American life laura boudreau mentions and it is hilarious: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1251
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