Sunburn and Lunar Wonder

Forty years ago today I was a teenager spending a month-long vacation with my family in Florida. There were two things that made today etched forever in my memory: the first lunar landing and a case of sunburn I received from fall asleep on the beach.

Since the space program has fascinated me from its beginning, like millions of others of that time, I stayed up late to watch those grainy black and white images on a television relayed back to those marvelled by the wonder of it all, reported by Walter Cronkite who shared in that sense of wonder and astonishment. There were those who said (back on earth) that the whole thing was a stunt filmed on earth in either a sound studio in Hollywood or Death Valley. Fortunately, those "conspiracy" believers were in the minority.

I remember after the excitement of watching the lunar landing walks and bouncing by astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin, trying to sleep, but the sunburn and a historical milestone that seems so much nearer than forty years ago, keeping me up longer than I'd ever been awake in my life at that time.

I had hoped, like Stanley Kubrick, that by 2001, the world would have made greater strides in the space program, but such has not been the case. Perhaps one day, astronauts will venture out beond the moon, and I hope I am alive to see that event. Sunburn, however, is something I never wish to experience again