40 years ago today...

[senoritafish]

Forty years ago? I was six, we had only shortly before moved into this house in this neighborhood. I was going to start second grade at a new school in a couple of months - strangely enough, at the ones my kids attend now.

My parents called us into the knotty-pine paneled den, and we sat on the hard floor, gathered aroung a 12-inch black and white TV. I think there were still boxes around us, we hadn't finished moving in. Grainy, high contrast images. Men putting up a flag, hopping like kangaroos, sipping lunch out of tubes. I was rapt and couldn't look away; I don't remember if my brothers were, being not quite five. Dad worked for one of the companies that helped put those men up there, and we quite understood that this was history. I think one of our parents said this would be something to tell our kids or grandkids about, I don't remember who. Later, we went outside the back door and looked up in the sky, wondering if we could catch a glimpse of the men that were up there; no, said my dad, they'd be way too tiny for us to see.

Maybe this is part of what later fueled my love of science fiction and the idea of other worlds. That certainly hasn't left me. I thought by now the world would be much farther along.