Forty-four years ago tonight, my mother hatched her own plan. On that summer night and just under 250,000 miles away, three brave Americans were preparing to make history. The LEM containing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was preparing to land on the surface of the moon, while Mike Collins orbited - and waited above - in the service module Columbia. The whole nation was watching on television. The whole nation. Except me. Where was I? Across the street over at the schoolyard playing baseball with my friends.
Mom could not understand why I would miss out on a chance to see this momentous and historic occasion. So she had an idea: She told me she would turn on the front porch light when they were about to
Fat chance, Mom. Priorities are priorities.
Now, later on - after it got dark, naturally, which rendered further baseball impossible - I found myself planted in front of our living room black and white television watching history unfold along with my parents, sister, and maternal grandparents. I understood that it was a BIG thing, as much as an eight-year old who had baseball on the brain could, I suppose. Did I appreciate it as much as an adult would have? No. But to this day I consider myself very lucky to have been alive and old enough to have understood what has happening.
Except for the sound of screaming mid-summer locusts outside and the hum/rattle of our window unit air conditioner, the house was silent. In a kind of reverent awe - as if a sudden noise or a random uttered
At a few minutes before 10:00 Central Time, pictures were beamed back from the moon showing the ghostly picture of a man standing on what looked like a huge metallic leg; in the background, there showed a semi-circle sliver of moon surface. Neil Armstrong paused before making history and commented on the physical consistency of the ground upon which he was about to stand.
"I'm going to step off the LEM now."
There is some historical debate as to whether in the excitement of the moment Armstrong misspoke his first words, leaving out the "a" after the "for" and before the "man" making it "One small step for man" instead of "One small step for a man", rendering it sort of redundant. A subsequent NASA examination of the audio tape showed there had been garbling of the signal due to storms over certain portions of the Earth in the right
(Click on this link to hear Neil Armstrong's famous words.) "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
And with that, our world changed. We went back a few times - all successfully, except for the cinematically-documented Apollo 13 mission - but eventually as a species we went scurrying back to safety under the wide and protective skirt of Mother Earth, save for a ton of circular orbits of the planet doing experiments and such. Conspiracy theorists say that somewhere along the line, aliens got a hold of us and basically said: "You're not welcome out here." And that's why we've not gone back, or onward to Mars. More than likely though we just lack the political will that was once fueled by nationalistic pride and competition, and we're also missing the copious amounts of money that would be needed for the endeavor.
In July of 1969, however, it seemed as if it would be a given: In the years to come, we would routinely travel to the moon and beyond. We didn't, of course. But for that time period, we all dropped what we were doing and simply watched, absorbed, took it all in, and tried to remember. Housework was put away, parties paused, work was stopped, and baseballs were placed safely in worn and sun-bleached gloves to await another day.
I'm just glad that Neil decided to make his first step when it was too dark to see a ground ball coming my way. Because if he had stepped out during a glorious summer mid-afternoon? Decisions, decisions....
