Recovered Memory

by Bob Jardine

Naaaaah, I said to myself. Never seen ‘em before.

I went back inside and tried to do some work, but that thought kept nagging at me. I wondered again, what the heck was that stuff? And why did it remind me of something?

So I got out my telescope -- you know, the thing I use to look in the neighbors’ windows? Turns out, if you point the dang thing up at the sky, it works pretty well that way too!

It took me awhile to figure out how to focus it without any people or furniture in the view, but eventually, I figured out that the little bright things, when focused, were nearly pinpoints of light -- all different colors and brightnesses! And there were zillions of ‘em! Not only that, some of them were in pairs and little groups or “clusters”, as I decided to call them. And there were even some fuzzy things here and there. What the heck was going on?

But, surprise, one particularly bright one wouldn’t focus to a pinpoint, nor was it a little fuzzy thing. It was a little round disk, and it even had a ring around it! Then I started to think -- just a half thought: "that’s funny, seems like I’ve seen this thing before... in fact, I think I’ve even seen pictures of it!"

I spent quite a while looking at stuff in the sky through the telescope. This was fun, I thought. Maybe I’ll do some research on the Internet and see if there is anything that will tell me what’s going on. I sure wish I could figure out why I think I’ve seen this before, maybe a long, long, time ago.

Maybe if I take the telescope out again next time it isn’t cloudy, I’ll start to remember...

Hey, come to think of it, maybe this would be fun to do in a group. Any of you guys got a telescope? Maybe we could all take them out to a hilltop, and... Oh, yeah!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 13, 2006 20:45:46 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Apr 14, 2006 20:51:44 PT