Yes, It Looks Like a Man With Horse Legs. Now Go To Sleep.

I learned something surprising in my Beginning Astronomy class:  I am really good at celestial interpretation.  In fact, I probably could have tested out if there was a Final Exam Of The Certified Space Explorer.

I had pre-fretted needlessly about my inability to comprehend not only fiery fireball hugeness, but those distances and speeds you need to travel for a decent firsthand glimpse at a real star.

My brain shuts down with giant numbers.

It shuts down with teeny numbers, too.  A chemistry professor once mentioned out loud that nobody had ever actually seen an electron.  Pppsssshhhhht.  And I had to memorize its weight for the test?  I don't think so, Professor Weirdo.  I am ordering my brain to stop listening now!

I showed him.

But stars are so easy to figure out since they connect to form comically disproportionate characters.

I believe an impromptu constellation-naming party broke out during a cave person camping trip.  Why would cave parents take their cave children outside of the cave to camp, you ask?  For the same reason my Wyoming parents took their Wyoming children outside of our mountain range to camp.

Cheap fun.

Before 'safety experts' paved everything but the water coming out of Old Faithful, you could drive right up to the geyser and pitch your tent under the pine trees.

I make that sound easy - but our tent was one of those extra-thick canvas varieties, lined with brass grommets that doubled as weapons.  Atilla The Hun's parents hauled these tents over the Alps on elephants when their family headed for campout fun in Italy.

The tent weighed more than our station wagon, so our arrival was heralded by sparks as the back bumper rode in on the asphalt.  We cruised through Yellowstone Park's South Entrance and rich tourists in Airstream trailers reported a rusted rocket ship landing in slow motion.

I'll never figure out how my father put that tent up.  The pole supports had very recently been actual trees, and none of us was strong enough to help.  He'd be wrapped in diesel-fuel-oil-smelling canvas, using brute strength and Dad Magic to balance several poles inside while simultaneously pounding stakes into the ground outside.  Mom hummed and built a little campfire to boil the coffee grounds she'd sewn up in tiny cotton sacks for the trip.

Dad loved coffee.

Another thing about Yellowstone back then was that there were lots of bears.

We hoisted our food into trees at night, or stored it in a green metal cooler that was dented from being rolled around by bears.  We learned not to panic when a bear meandered through the campground - there were plenty of dumb people who forgot to secure their stuff.

One year my sister Beverly brought a friend who secretly stashed cookies under Beverly's pillow and waited for the adults to fall asleep.

The friend fell asleep.

The next morning we thanked our lucky stars that we were camped next to even dumber people than Beverly's friend, so the bears had even easier pickings.  I still shudder knowing my world was only one gingersnap-stuffed baggie away from being minus four adorable nieces.

But even after meeting Beverly's dumb friend, sleeping under the stars did not scare me early on.  My sister Jenny and I stared up through the trees and pointed out all the Big Dippers.  There were hundreds of them!  There was a massive die-off at some point, because now we only have a Big one and a Little one.

Camping Cave Dwellers stared at the night sky and named star groups depending on their own personalities.  Paranoid?  Yeah, you're right.  That looks like a poisonous scorpion.  Contented?  Oh, look!  There's a beautiful woman holding a huge jug of fresh water.  And so on.

I'll never forget the year we attended a special Park Ranger Campfire Chat.  The ranger was distressed.  Please, he begged the campers, stop dipping your children in honey to get pictures of them being licked by bears.

WHAT??  I demanded to know why our parents didn't love us enough to get super-cute pictures with bears!

The ranger whined on.  Do not line your car antenna with marshmallows for the bears and set your baby on the hood for a home movie.

I stopped listening for two reasons.

One - marshmallows were my favorite things in the world at the time and I would never have shared however many fit on a car antenna with anything, including a bear, even for a home movie.  Two - I had no idea what a home movie was.

But it was much harder to fall asleep that night.  Jenny and I saw the stars more clearly since our pupils had refused to un-dilate after the crying ranger talk.  All those Big Dippers turned into Killer Pisces and Libra Gone Bad.

We moved into the tent and let the fuel oil fumes lull us into a safer sleep.

My Beginning Astronomy teacher was intimidated by my innate knowledge.  She had never noticed how closely Capricornus resembles a bikini bottom, or that Virgo looks eerily like 'Lectronimo, the little robot dog that visited The Jetsons.

I'll offer to help teach this class if the instructor ever returns my calls, and I will give the scary stars friendlier names.  I'm not blaming the Camping Cave Families, mind you.  They had no way of knowing their prehistoric get-the-kids-to-sleep game would stick around long enough for paper and Galileo to be invented.

I shall start by changing Ophiuchus ("Coffin") to Postaralus (it's a dead ringer for a rural mailbox).  And why not change the Orion cluster to match what it exactly resembles?  The Celestial VitaMix.  It does not get less scary than that.

My dad resides in the heavens now, and I know he'll help out with a really big tent if renaming stars becomes my post-retirement hobby.

When I get the green light, I'll send Save-the-Date postcards for my class:  "Holy Hercules Dipped In Honey, Astro, There's An Ursa In The Marshmallows!"

Cheap fun.

(Nothing to do next Friday?  Wrong!  Come back and learn all about why I am quite certain you have Lyme disease.  Or something.)