Stars and Uglies and the Man in the Moon

One of my earliest memories is laying in the front seat of the car and watching the street lights as they passed by the window. I remember thinking about how pretty they looked with their star burst tails stretching out like long fingers. I imagined they tickled and touched the stars. Even then I had a rather peculiar imagination, I suppose.

I had an interesting idea of the big dipper and the man in the moon too. Living in Corpus Christi with plenty of open space and mild weather, and before people were so poorly behaved, being outside after dark was pretty normal so these discussions came up quite readily. It has been suggested that people have always been despicable. We just didn’t know about it until the advent of cable. I don’t think so. It was a simpler time then. People knew their neighbors. Someone was nearly always home. Folks rarely locked their doors and always invited strangers having car trouble in to use the phone or have a glass of iced tea till they could find the jumper cables. It was a much simpler time.

By the time I was 8 years old, we had moved to Memphis where, because my last name started with a V, was promptly placed at a desk in the back of the room with the students whose names started with W’s and Y’s. I didn’t particularly like it in the back of the room. I wanted to be close to a window. Apparently, being the new kid did not afford me such a luxury in this city school.

Sometime during that year, my teacher called my parents in for a meeting. That could only mean one thing. I was in trouble. For what, I could not imagine but fear ran through my veins and my heart was pounding so hard I thought for sure it was going to bust right out. I wasn’t even invited to the meeting. I was pretty sure I was going to be grounded for some unknown offense for the rest of my life. I envisioned dishes and trash bags piled to the ceiling and my parents scowling because I wasn't working hard or fast enough. Cinderella had nothin’ on me.

My parents came home from the meeting and oddly, didn’t say a word. The following week, however, I was kept out of school to go to see an optometrist. I didn’t know what that was but I was certain I was going to get a shot. I was taken into a dark room with a very large pair of binoculars on a swinging arm. My parents went in with me, thank goodness. I still did not know what I was in for but it had to be something bad. I asked if it was going to hurt. The doctor smiled and said “no. Put your chin here and read me those letters”. “What letters?” I asked. “Oh my! We DO have a problem!” he said. I figured the shot was coming. He flipped some clacky hoolydoos and suddenly before my eyes appeared the biggest letter E I had ever seen! The eye exam continued with the doctor asking a lot of questions I couldn’t really answer; “which is better…A or B?… 1 or 2?…A or B”? I got a little tired of the game. Turns out I couldn’t answer the questions because the letters didn’t look normal to me. At least, not the way I had gotten used to seeing them.

Finally, it was over. I was given a sucker, a pat on the head and some drops in my eyes but no shot. I kind of liked that part because I got to wear my mom’s sunglasses home. I fancied I looked like a movie star. A week passed and we went back to pick up the ugliest pair of brown tortoise shell rectangular glasses I had ever seen. No way was I going to wear those at school.

The very first thing I remember is walking like Paris Hilton. High stepping because the sidewalk was coming at me. I couldn’t find the curb either and decided it might be best to hang on to someone. On the way home we stopped at the store. Walking through the store, still holding on tight to my mother’s hand, I was amazed at what I could see! “Oh Mommy! Look at those cute little things in the ceiling!” She was not nearly as impressed with the sprinklers as I was for some reason.

My first day at school with my new glasses was pretty brutal. Amongst all the pointing and laughing and jeering, I had no choice but to wear them because the chalk board was just a large, green, blank screen without them. I could not wait to get home and hide in my room. I was grotesque with those stupid, ugly glasses and there was just no way around it. Give me the trash and dishes. I deserved them.

Later that night, once the sun had dipped below the horizon, my mom tapped on my door. Tempting me with lemonade, she led me out to the front porch where we sat on the steps. It was a clear, warm night and the fireflies were dancing around the yard to music only they could hear. Turning off the porch light and with a slight nod of the head, my mother urged me to look up. I could not believe my bespectacled eyes.

The entire sky lit up like Christmas lights. There was not one empty space. Clusters of gleaming light spanned all the way to the horizon and I saw stars for the first time in my life. We had to walk out into the yard to see the moon. It was high, bright and full. And, much to my surprise, it was round and smooth. It had always looked like a gray dandelion to me. I could see the dark lines from the craters and suddenly, the world made sense.

I saw the man in the moon.