Flurries fell a little while ago. They were small and wispy and didn’t last very long. It’s cold again, 29°. Yesterday I did some errands and cleaned the bathrooms; today I’ll do nothing as I’d hate to get into the routine of doing something every day. I will make my bed, shower and brush my teeth, but that’s it! I’m in flannel pants, a sweatshirt and warm slippers. They will be the uniform of the day.

When I was growing up, we imagined. I didn’t have any guns but sticks worked just as well, except for the spinning with your fingers part. I did have to yell, “I got you,” so my victim would know he was shot and could fall dramatically holding his chest. When I’d read, I could see all of the characters in my mind’s eye. I was part of the action. The 50’s science fiction movies now look a bit silly with their crude special effects, but I love them still. The same with monsters. I remember The Thing with Two Heads, one black and one white, and the hand which roamed the old mansion halls and strangled the guests.

Even though I didn’t know the concept I had learned to suspend disbelief. I took the monsters and space aliens at face value. They were, after all, just characters in movies.

I never saw the moon landing, but I did hear it on the radio; however, listening to it didn’t give the historic event a whole lot of impact. I might as well have been listening to The War of the Worlds. There we were huddled around the radio hearing the announcer from Voice of America say Armstrong had jumped off the ladder onto the moon. We heard his historic, “One small step for man…,” but had to imagine it all. It seemed more science fiction than real.

In my mind the moon landing is a black and white movie. The spaceship is huge, and the astronauts can walk upright from one floor to another. The women bring sandwiches and coffee to the hard-working male astronauts. They spend a lot of time looking out the portholes a the Earth gets smaller and the moon bigger. They even land on the moon. Those landings I have seen many times.