Midi Onodera

Big Blue Marble

Tang. That was the drink of the astronauts. If you wanted to make your mark in the future, you drank Tang just like them. Apollo 11 made history on July 20, 1969 with the momentous walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong.

She recalls she had been bike riding with a friend in the morning, a bright, sunny, cloudless day. It was lunchtime and time for the Flintstones. Two of her favorite things. A bowl of Campbellā€™s chicken noodle soup and a cheese sandwich made with white bread. Her mother insisted she watch the moon walk instead of her usual cartoon fair. Disappointment turned into disbelief. How could a man walk on the moon? Was this true? Was this just on TV or was this really taking place on the moon?

Years later, she discovered that the walk on the moon had been televised at night and not during the day as she remembered. How much more did she get wrong about her past? Could she ever really trust her memory or was it simply a rerun?

Posted January 1, 2020