“Where are the tickets?” I said with a half-panicked gasp. The line was moving steadily ahead, and we were almost at the admissions booth.
My husband searched his wallet, while I frantically fondled my video camera case; my pockets full of gum, tissues, and Dramamine for motion sickness; and my backpack stuffed with water bottles, sunglasses, wet wipes, and brochures
“Found ÔÇÿem!” my husband exclaimed with relief, just as we stepped up to the Kennedy Space Center ticket window. Following a wave of tourists through the entrance, our family headed to the IMAX theater to watch a 3-D movie about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Once in our seats, I wondered why humans can put a man on the moon but can’t figure out how to make 3-D glasses look anything less than absolutely ridiculous.
Suddenly, Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice boomed through the theater’s sound system and bursts of stars and nebulae hurtled toward my face. For the next 45 minutes, we were totally transfixed, as unfathomable images of space-walking astronauts, neighboring planets and distant galaxies floated weightlessly before our ridiculously bedecked eyes.
At one point in the film, we saw Hubble telescope photographs of galaxies at the far reaches of our known Universe. Leonardo explained that, due to the speed of light and the mind-boggling distances involved, the images portrayed the celestial bodies as they actually were nearly 13 billion years ago.
As the spectacular images bombarded my senses, my mind struggled to comprehend how mere human beings have figured out how to take detailed photographs of infant galaxies from the dawn of time.
At this very moment, my overworked brain approached maximum capacity. Like some kind of computer crash, the mental strain caused my mind to go blank, and the only thought I could manage was what I wanted for lunch.
We recuperated over hot dogs and soda before heading for the bus that would take us on a tour of the NASA launch facilities. While waiting in line, I occupied my time with people watching
I always enjoyed performing amateur analyses on strangers. I liked to think that I could figure a person out just by seeing what they had in their grocery cart, or what they were reading at the airport terminal, or what they were saying to their friend in the food court.
As I looked up and down the line of space enthusiasts, I noticed a lot of foreigners — Asians, Indians, Persians and Arabs in particular. Everyone looked highly intelligent, and I started feeling a bit intimidated.
I glanced self-consciously at my own little family. Our teenage son was scraping off and eating the plop of hot fudge that was in the middle of his Steeler shirt. Our teenage daughter was twirling her hair and looking at her nail polish. Our youngest daughter was staring cross-eyed at a bubble she just blew. My mother was playing peek-a-boo with a nearby toddler, and my husband was yawning.
Compared to this crowd of intellectually superior science enthusiasts, we looked like a bunch of simpletons.
Just then, I saw another average middle class American family in line, searching for their bus tickets. The husband (or baby-daddy) was wearing a t-shirt that read “Bacon is Meat Candy,” and the mother was clad in a lace crop top that allowed the exposed parts of her tattooed fleshy mid-section to bulge over the top of her short shorts. The daughter was wearing Minnie Mouse ears, and the son was picking his nose.
As they anxiously searched their camera bags and pockets for the tickets, something dropped from the mother’s purse. Colorful candy balls scattered everywhere, and the kids scrambled to retrieve the fallen Skittles. Despite some slight differences (I wouldn’t be caught dead in a crop top and prefer Junior Mints to Skittles) I felt a certain kinship with the family and empathized with their plight.
Later that night after touching moon rocks, riding in Shuttle simulators, and gazing at launch pads, we laid in our hotel beds, still struggling to fathom that a group of chain-smoking, coffee-drinking, Bryl-cream-wearing math and science geeks from the 1960s sent men in a rocket to the moon in an age when cutting edge technology still included black and white console TVs, rotary dial phones, and transistor radios.
The next day, I found myself people watching again while waiting in line for 90 minutes at nearby Space Mountain. Most were wearing silly hats, at least half were eating turkey legs, none looked particularly intelligent, but all seemed happy.
I realized that the people of this world are incredibly diverse. Like space and time, human beings fall on a vast continuum, and whether one is a rocket scientist or dumb as a rock, it is our similarities rather than our differences that define us as humankind.
Great story, Lisa. You captured the experience beautifully. And your angst at seeing overexposed Americans. I see them everyday at Busch Gardens and wonder if they looked in the mirror before they left the house.
Oh, no kdevries – I’ll never claim to be from Wisconsin again. Up til now I was proud of that fact. Hopefully, the woman was from Illinois and trying to make Cheese Heads look bad.
Aw, this is thoughtful and sweet. It reminds me of the conversation between Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa as they lay in the grass stargazing.
Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?
Timon: Pumbaa, I don’t wonder; I know.
Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?
Timon: They’re fireflies. Fireflies that, uh… got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.
Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.
Timon: Pumbaa, with you, everything’s gas.
You are so right, Diana. Timon and Pumbaa are more on my family’s level of intellectual thought!
I enjoyed your writing. I especially liked your description of the woman “overflowing.” We were in a similar setting when we saw a woman (possibly the same woman?) showing her Green Bay Packers’ support by wearing a bra-style top made of two LARGE chunks of styrofoam fashioned to look like triangular blocks of cheese. Now, that is a fashion statement…which, unfortunately, I will never get out of my head! 🙂
Oh great, now I will never get that image out of my head either….
Thanks for reading!