Gimme Some Space–Man!

The topic of the week is: Would I want to travel to outer space?
Nuh,uh!

I would love to see Earth from a Space Shuttle or a space station, but I don’t really even want to go that far…shoot, I can’t even imagining getting to see friends in Australia, (yes, that means you, Iris!),or to accept standing invitations I have to Kenya and India. I am trying to make it to a family wedding in Pennsylvania this June, and not sure that is going to happen.
But even so, gee, space travel is not for those, like me, who tend to ‘play it safe’. Let’s face it, not only have tragedies happened but there are more and more near-tragedies than they let on to the general public.

Oh, I LOVE Start Trek in almost all its incarnations, and Start Wars, at least, the original couple, but when I was little, alien movies scared me to the core.
“My Favorite Martian” aside, “The Thing” who was James Arness, (later the highly lovable Marshall Matt Dillon of “Gun Smoke”) He played a vegetable man that was a frightening as anything could possibly be, (at least, to me when I was about 5).
Shortly afterwards I saw the original “Invaders From Mars” and I hardly slept for a long time.

It was about a boy who saw a ‘flying saucer’ land behind a hill near his house. No one believed him but when anyone went onto the hill, they fell through the sand there and emerged “taken over”. It even happened to his father, who was played by Leif Ericson, who later played the semi-lovable Big John Cannon of “The High Chaparral” .(What is it with big men, alien pictures, then westerns?) As it ended we were told it was a dream, but at the very end of the film, we are shown the saucer swoop in behind the hill. Shudder! There was also spooky vocalizing as the people fell through the swirling sand and, in watching  the trailer, the sound still makes me uncomfortable.
It affected me so badly that when this pesky little sister was trying to wheedle herself into a game with her brother and his friends while they were playing “Space Ship” well…..

In the house that we had moved into one of the bedrooms had a mural of children and an old-fashioned schoolhouse which the landlady’s brother had painted for his niece and nephew. Not to be outshone in the creativity department by his brother-in-law, the landlord, “created” a ceiling light cover out of a piece of tin and a large steel can, which he painted to match the blue walls of the room. It was ‘different’, which is a phrase my mother used when something was bad,( unless it was someone else’s food that was ‘almost’ comparable to hers.)

[The landlord had also painted the small living room/dining room and hall a dark chocolate brown, then he used bold white paint strokes to make a rendition of a wild boar on the living room wall. My mother promptly hung a large mirror, albeit too low, to cover it; he was insulted.]

Anyway, the boys were playing space ship in the aforementioned bedroom and they tolerated me for a while. I was a little nervous with the aliens attacking ‘our ship’, but we were doing well keeping them out,(via the hallway door) , until one of the boys raised a toy rifle to the strange light fixture and yelled, “They’re coming through the nosecone!”
I shrieked and went running out of the room. That would have sent me straight into the alien’s arms but instead I went straight into the kitchen to my mother’s arms. She promptly demanded to know what on Earth,( I was extremely grateful that we WERE on Earth), had happened. My brother entered with his friends behind him, all of them laughing hysterically.

That was pretty much the end of me trying to play with the boys. When I tried to push my way in with them anytime afterward, the alien-spotter would yell, “There coming through the nosecone!” And yes, it actually did scared me again, the first time he purposely pulled it. After that, I knew they just didn’t want me there, so it still worked in its way.

I do believe there have been visited by Beings from other planets here. I have seen enough strange things in the sky to know that no, they were not weather balloons, or Venus in close proximity or a conjunction of it with Jupiter and Saturn. I like to believe that any visitor have some wisdom, since they must be pretty smart and powerful to get this far and yet, here we sit unmolested.
Perhaps some of what I have seen have been “ours” that is, man-made, human-made, Human/Earthling/Terran/ ? -made,(whatever name we really should agree upon to identify ourselves). As I said, I don’t believe for one minute that the general public is privy to all that has ever gone on in the space programs around the world…our world.

At least I think it’s “our” world, although my sister has always insisted that I am from Mars because of the Warner Brothers’ cartoon “Rocket Bye Baby”.

It is about a Martian baby who was mistakenly sent to Earth.The second line begins,”In the Summer of 1954…”, which is when I was born.My sister says that would explain a lot.

So, do you want to go to space? Or have any space movies scared you?Any other Spacey thoughts?
Won’t you leave an ideas you have below?

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