Total solar eclipse FOMO?

This, from “Skye 2, ” one of my stories in Triumph: Collected Stories, is pure 1970s-childhood truth:

For the last field exercise, we sat on the four-square outline and waited until Mr. F said it was safe to look at the sun. He said if we peeked, we would go blind. Nobody peeked. We stared at ants crossing the white painted concrete. ‘You can look now, children,’ Mr. F pronounced. The sun was a total circle of pitch black.

Hold up, now. Tomorrow, across Western Europe, we will witness a total eclipse of the sun at approx. 10:30 a.m. French time, yet my kids’ schools have issued complicated French explications (that’s French for ‘explanations’) that all students will remain inside all morning, shutters down, eyes downcast, no eclipse viewed.

My three-year-old’s school statement helpfully added that if we want our children to view the eclipse, we can keep them home. Never mind the fact that eclipse-viewing disposable glasses have sold out across the nation.

What freaks me out somewhat is, of course, remembering that we viewed a total solar eclipse with impunity back in New Zealand in the late ’70s when I was seven.

The school principal quoted in the Daily Mail in the UK (perhaps a slightly dramatic publication, but they get great soundbites) that she can’t risk one of her 700 students peeking. Well, our teacher, Mr. F had the entire student body out there front and center, and we didn’t peek. We didn’t have fancy disposable glasses. Yet, we didn’t go blind.

Parents, according to the Daily Mail, are saddened their children will view this phenomenon via TV instead of in ‘real time.’ Well, allow me to refer to the subsequent passage from ‘Skye 2’:

The school building, playing field and beyond, even our shop with our house on top of it, were all dark. But not a night dark. I could still make everything out. It was a nasty darkness.

We are scared of field exercises.

That story progresses to Mr. F taking the student body up a hill for a ‘Tsunami Drill,’ but, regardless, I feel both privileged to have seen a total solar eclipse with my own naked eyes, and horrified to have seen a total solar eclipse with my own naked eyes.

Who’s watching the eclipse tomorrow — with or without their kids?

Lizzie Harwood’s love of her home country, New Zealand, spills over into her writing, as evidenced by the vibrant — and sometimes charmingly quirky — stories she tells. That isn’t to say she doesn’t adore her adopted country, France, where she currently resides with her husband and two children. Lizzie’s Triumph: Collected Stories, launched in February, 2015. When she isn’t writing, she’s neck-deep in editing. Visit EditorDeluxe.com, Lizzie Harwood Books on Facebook, and @lizziehbooks on Twitter for the latest.