Four people whipped around the moon. The module was slightly different. It felt bad to feel good about a weak imitation of something humans had figured out how to do, and done, two generations ago. Still, I set my phone to the NASA youtube channel and let the feed feed me. The minutes when they were out of contact, screeching through the atmosphere, red hot, praying for the strength of the tile.
I drove up to a thrift store in Columbia, Missouri. I was there for a conference, and to practice traveling again. I had a nervous breakdown last summer while 1,500 miles away from home, so I took baby steps in travel.
The thrift store was made of corrugated metal. They had poured themselves a set of stairs, and two people sat on the stair railing, chatting.
There was nowhere to park. You know, college town nowhere to park. I spotted a small space on the street, and carefully, thrillingly, got my car right in it. I was a god.
I walked up to the people on the stoop. “Are they not open yet?” I asked.
“No, not until 1,” someone said.
This was my second try. I was not going to this place.
“Hey, I saw you hit his car!” someone said.
“What?”
“I said, I saw you hit his car. You know you hit it!”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I said, acting the part of an innocent and humble middle-aged white lady. “I’ll check though, thank you for telling me.”
Did I say that? “Thank you for telling me”? Maybe. Kinda twisted.
I looked at the front bumper of the car behind me. It was as dinged up as a target at a shooting range. My own back bumper had several mystery scrapes as well.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, meaning of course I didn’t see anything new. I had a backup camera now, for God’s sake!
“You know you did that!” someone yelled again, and I got in my car and drove away, furious.
I found another thrift store, walked around it, flustered and frustrated. I saw a woman grab a dress identical to one I owned. Mine had an oil spot on it, so I stopped wearing it. The woman took the dress into a fitting room. My God. I could get another of that great dress. The woman who was trying it on was black, and wore a scarf over her hair, in this thrift store run by, and frequented by, slightly fancy, old white people.
She probably needed that dress.
I continued drifting around the small shop, like a shark, and waiting for her to come out. I looked at scarves I didn’t care about, dishes I didn’t care about, and pictures I didn’t care about.
She was out! She had the dress in her hands.
I drove back to the conference.
The people who buzzed the moon were happy. No one had done this for so long!
I got up to put in some laundry, and the six minutes of four people screaming from the stars to the earth had begun. I measured detergent. I shut the lid. I should clean the washing machine. Didn’t you do that with vinegar or something?
Six minutes.
At school, I hear that one of my students revealed a suicide plan, and has now been checked into treatment. What did the kid get flung from? Where were they now? How do you ever catch someone, a kid especially, when they are thrown?
Six minutes. It was Friday, so it was collapse and pizza night. I had my bed, mostly unmade as usual, and my cats hanging out on it, and my puffy pillow and my good view of the backyard trees and neighbors’ hundred-year-old houses. One driveway back there has a little basketball hoop and sometimes a little kid plays catch with a grown-up.
Six minutes.
One of our students reeks of cat pee. Have I lived with a cat pee odor? I have. This student is only sporadically at school. Honestly, that is the way it is now, kids can go to school sporadically. They can be spores in the wind, and unless someone goes way out of their way to tell the state, nothing happens. It’s frightening.
I flip through racks of size small pants and size small t-shirts, trying to imagine what the kid living in cat pee would wear.
Six minutes away, six minutes.
The line, before you get to the ride. The line that I have psyched myself up to wait in, but once I am told to be seated, to start my adventure, I choke on my fear.
Six minutes. The kid isn’t at school to receive the clothes. No one knows when the kid will be back. Bags sit in my classroom, behind my desk, part of the mess.
Twenty-five thousand miles an hour.
How fast do our kids feel like they are going?
How are we not strapping them in?
If the capsule falls too fast, the astronauts may black out from the g-forces.
The protection on the most recent unmanned flight had cracked and popped during reentry.
They were going to send it at a slightly different angle.
It might be fine.
It might be fine.
Image: gold pendant capsule in the form of a male figure, Cypriot, 6th-4th century BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Going On 