nature: outer space

I used to believe…

a friend of mine once told me that the universe was infinite. When i asked him to elaborate his explantation he told me that if i just kept thinking about it my head would explode. i took him completely seriously and during science lessons would sometimes burst into tears at being forced to contemplate space.

When I was very young I was warned not to look at the sky during an upcoming solar eclipse. If I did, I would instantly go blind. I made a blindfold from an old tee shirt and gave it to my father to use while driving his car to work that day.

Like kids everywhere in the English-speaking world, I knew the rhyme "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" from early childhood. Except to me the word 'twinkle' meant not only the light stars gave off, but also the sound!

I was living in the Caribbean, where there were treefrogs singing every night. Now, our particular variety of treefrog made a very pretty, high-pitched sound, just the sort of sound you'd think the word 'twinkling' described. They were also just small, dull grey splotches about the size of a child's fingernail, very very hard to spot at night; and they never came out and sang until after dark, when the stars had come out too. And since I'd never seen a treefrog...of course that was the noise of the stars. Why would there be a nursery rhyme about it otherwise?

Not only did I never question this as a child, I didn't find out the error of my ways until I was 16, when we moved to London. One day I moaned to my mother that you couldn't hear the stars twinkle in the city.... It took her ages to work out what I was talking about!

I used to believe that I lived in a town called Germany in a country called Earth, but I just could not figure out what planet I was on. I asked my mom what the name of the planet was and she replied "Earth" and I remember thinking that she was a total idiot. I just walked off and concluded that I was on Pluto, that being the only planet name I could remember.

When I was a child I lived in the Caribbean and I loved looking at the stars. I was sure I could hear the stars twinkleing. I t was only 4 years ago when as a very grown adult my cousin Mandy took great delight in saying, " It is not the stars you idiot! It is the sounds that the frogs and the crickets are making" She was right.

I used to believe that the stars sang. When they came out in the evening, the chirping would begin; first one star, then two, then a whole host of them, chirping to different rythms, then for one breathtaking moment, singing in unison. The songs used to have words in my head, little repeated phrases like "flower pretty" or "Standard Oil." (I remember being amazed that the stars knew my Daddy was a pilot for Standard Oil. How did they know that?)

I was living in California. Later I found out the sounds I was hearing were made by crickets that came out to chirp as the sun set. I still cherish the sound of crickets today.

I used to believe that the stars in the sky were one of two things: 1) they were holes created in the floor of heaven by the high heels of dancing girl angels and, 2) they were little peep holes created by all the people in heaven. They used the holes to look down on their familes below and make sure they were safe. (My dad passed away recently, so I'm back to believing this one.)

When I was a kid I remember hearing about and watching rockets being sent into space. I asked my mum about it and she explained that they were learning stuff about space so they sent someone up there to look around, but it cost a lot of money and could be dangerous.

For years I couldn't understand why they didn't just ask superman to go have a look for them.

When me and my sister were little we used to believe you could go "catch" a star. We were gonna go get it with a space shuttle, but we'd have to share it because the stars would try to float back home and we didn't think space shuttles would be able to "hold down" more than one.

I used to monitor clear starry night skies very closely because I was sure if I looked hard enough that I would see Star Wars-styled space battles with lasers and everything. I can remember borrowing my dad's binoculars and just staring out my window for HOURS, dude!

I used to think that stars were just big holes in a shoe box, a shoe box that we all lived in as pets of a huge giant. Every day when the sun came out that would be him taking the top off of the box and shinning a light in on us all to watch us. At night he closed the lid when he went to bed, but being the nice giant he was left us little air holes as stars so that we could breathe. The moon was our night light, which some nights he forgot to turn on

I remember watching a television show about how SOMEDAY the sun would turn into a red giant and burn the Earth up.

Well, I thought that meant like NEXT WEEK, so for days I kept glancing at the sun through squinted eyes to see if it was getting bigger.

During a very long car ride to the ocean, I came to the conclusion that the moon was actually a reflection of Earth, and if I looked hard enough, I really could see my family's car moving on the surface.

When I was a kid, I thought the stars in the sky at night, were the balloons people let go.

I used to believe that whenever the space shuttle launched, it made a hole in the atmosphere, which I imagined was similar to a giant eggshell. For many years, I wondered how long it took for the hole to close, and why all the air on Earth didn't leak out!

I used to believe…

That crickets chirping were actually the stars twinkling.