snakes

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister

I had to share this story from my sister, because it makes me smile.


mars: a true anecdote

I channeled you today. I had to.

I was mentoring. When I'm mentoring I'm constantly freaked out that I'm going to leave a lasting misimpression on the child, just through my own forgetfulness. Today's reading passage was about naming a kitten-- LAME-- but I figured I was safe. What could he possibly ask me that I could fuck up? I'm ahead, in the world of kittens.

However, part of my job is also to go over "fast reading cards," where he has to quickly identify certain words and phrases on cards, to increase his fluency. And they aren't related, so he can't do it by association. As a bonus I usually ask him to tell me a little something about what each phrase means.

"'Taught kindergarten.'"

"That's right Sam. What does that mean?"

"Like if I was a teacher, and I taught really young kids."

"Right. Next one?"

"'Pluck.'"

"Great. What does that mean?"

"Like if I played the guitar, I might pluck a string."

"Right. Or you could pluck a flower from the ground, or you could pluck a feather from a bird."

"Right."

"Next?"

"'Astronauts in space.'"

"Great job. What do you know about astronauts."

"They go in space, or to the moon--" and then the moment of truth. "Have we ever gone to Mars?"

Now, I know as much as the lay man knows about our space program. But like I said, I get nervous when I'm with this kid. He listens to me, he really does. This is my chance to enrich his world. He's asking me a question, and he is thirsting for an answer. I scrape my brain. There's got to be something I know is true. My brother is at Purdue for Aerospace Engineering. He has models of spacecrafts in his room and has shelves of books about Mars itself. I just need one thing that I can put in third-grade terms, something that sounds fantastic but that I know is right. Suddenly I get grab a single word.

"ROVERS!"

"What?"

"Sam, people can't go to Mars. Yet. But we send what they call rovers... they're like robots."

"Like robots?"

"Yeah, like robots. And we can control them from Earth." At this point I'm gesticulating wildly, grabbing my improv steering wheel. "They have cameras, so we can see what they see. And we can sort of steer them around, from Earth. They send back pictures and stuff so that we can see Mars without ever going there."

"Really?" he says, his eyes sparkling.

I breathe in deeply, having conquered the unknown myself. "Yeah, Sam. Really."