The Day I Knew I’d be a Life-Long Space Nut
Most people with a driving passion have a moment they can point to as the moment when that passion took hold. For me and space, it was my second grade project on Venus.
It boggled my seven-year-old mind that Venus, so bright and close that I could see it without binoculars, was so unlike Earth. Yes, its roughly the same size as our planet, but I thought of it then akin to the Earth inside out and backwards — hot like an oven and rotating the opposite way. And seeing pictures of the surface deepened the mystery. How could a planet so unlike ours also look like a rocky beach? It was the first time I had a sense of not only the variety of worlds in our cosmic backyard but also of the mysteries surrounding all those planets. That there was so much still to learn was tantalizing, and I still feel that way.
When we presented our projects in elementary school, the principle, Mr Frye (or Fry, I can’t recall) took pictures for the yearbook and snapped this shot of me presenting my report on Venus. Years later, a volunteer going through old boxes of materials found it, and it made its way back to my mom. I’ve posted it before; I love that I have this picture! But this artifact from my past just got more interesting. In a recent bout of cleaning out the basement, my mom found the report sitting against the poster in that picture. I was in French…
