Tonight is the last night of the 2013 Perseid Meteor Shower, which reminds me of this sweet, funny story.
As you know, we have a place on a lake, in a remote spot in the Wabash Valley. So the stargazing is pretty wonderful, even on a regular night. I love to drag quilts onto the driveway and feel the warmth of the blacktop on my back. Sometimes all of us line up, shoulder to shoulder, and we recite what we can remember about the dippers ‘n’ bears, Orion, and the North Star. We debate jet versus planet. And we catch our collective breath when we see a shooting star. I think almost all of us make a wish, because it gets really quiet for a few seconds. Why not make a wish? What’s to lose but the magic?
On one such occasion, it was just nine-year-old Mikey and me watching the stars out on the warm blacktop. Mikey’s grandma and grandpa were nearby, at the campfire, with the rest of the grownups.
“Do you believe in extraterrestrials?” I asked Mikey.
“Um, yeah,” he admitted. “I got a book from the library about creatures from outer space. I like to read all about ’em.”
“Well, I just think it is more fun to believe in them than not to believe in them,” I said.
“If you lose a library book at my school, it costs $4.00,” continued Mikey. “I think I’m going to lose this one.”
ginnygram 