Have you ever had that experience of extreme excitement in your youth when you discover something new for the first time. You know What I mean, that goose bumps moment. This recalled memory is of the day when I had one of those moments.
It is morning recess at my new school.
I remember standing in the playground, just standing and looking at the other kids playing with their classmates and friends. I was still pretty much new at the school and didn’t have many friends yet. There were a few kids that I played with during recesses, but they were not at school on this day. I was bored and I remember looking up at the sky.
It was a cool morning in the fall. The sky was perfectly clear without a single cloud. The sun was shining brightly. And then I noticed that there was this somewhat of a round shape in the morning sky with both bright and dark areas. Oh WOW! It was the moon. I had never seen the moon like this, especially during the day. And If I had I did not remember seeing the moon the way I was now seeing it. This was something new for me and I was very excited about it.
This is the day I discovered the moon.
I think that before this discovery, I never really paid any attention to the actual moon. And that it was a real celestial body that was important to our story telling, and as I would learn later, just how important it is for life here on earth. This discovery today would establish a new journey for me. I wanted to learn more about the moon. And I needed science to do that.
For me, learning about the moon through science meant there was no more man-in-the-moon. And on this day, I could not find him anywhere on the bright surface of the moon I saw. That was now just a story told to us by our parents when we were young since they didn’t know how to truly teach us about the moon.
I wanted to know everything about the moon and like where it was in the sky. And this is when I started to learn about space and the science of space. I knew about the sun and the stars, but only from the perspective of a young boy who was never really exposed to true science in Western North Carolina. And now I would begin something new in my age of discovery, and it would be a journey of the cosmos.
This was an exciting time for me.
I remember the first new word that came into my ever-expanding vocabulary. The word was “Astronaut”. And in my learning about space and space travel, the astronaut became a hero for me and became a goal of my future at that time.
And then another word invaded my vocabulary. And that word was “Aliens”. You know what I mean, the aliens from another planet who came here to invade Earth.
From the movies of the time, aliens in the science fiction world would be those strange non-human creatures who would invade the earth. Oh my, what more could there be? My imagination would run wild thinking about this. And I still slept with the light on.
Yes, science fiction took over my thinking at a young age. I wanted to see as many science-fiction movies as I could. I am pretty sure that other boys and girls my age back in the early nineteen-sixties had imaginations like I had.
I went to see the movie “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” with my friend and it became one of my favorites up util I discovered more movies, and then TV shows, that included space travel and battling aliens from outer space to protect the world. And as I grew older, into my teenage years, many more movies and TV shows I watched would include space travel and battling aliens from outer space.
It was probably good that my mom was not monitoring me in my early teens. Yes, her asking “what are you watching” became my “oh nothing interesting” response moments. I would get up and go change the channel just to cover my tracks. I don’t think she fully understood science fiction and the movies and TV shows that I was being exposed to.
I remember her not letting me watch Star Trek because Spock was green and had pointed ears. More on this later in my story. And helicopter-parenting still did not exist.
I think at this time I also wanted to learn more about real rockets and learned that the United States was sending rockets into the sky and into space. I started to watch the actual launch of these rockets with the astronauts in their space capsule on top.
So, I present this thought: Imagine the impact of discovering space science when you are a young nine-year-old boy, or nine-year-old girl, who was now being exposed to a different way of learning in general. And the year when I was nine years old was nineteen sixty-four. So, going to school in Phoenix, Arizona was very different than going to school in a small town in Western North Carolina.
What if we never moved to Arizona?
So, I pose this question: When you were at this age, what caught your attention? And did this event impact your young life in ways that helped you discover new things? And when did your age of discovery begin? These are just questions I have often asked myself when talking with others.
Little did I know that after this discovery, science fiction and the knowledge of science facts would have an important role in my future, and how I would expand what I learned into my life.
And about my early education, yes, I was that boy in the back of the classroom for most of my learning life in school. I was not considered smart. And I would ultimately break through this stigma with an energy that would allow me to overcome my setbacks in learning to excel. This is one moment in my life that began to open my eyes, and my understanding, of just how important I can be.
And there is much more to come…
“Follow my story for new vignettes”