Lost Time Incident

March 29, 2003

Outer Space was Different Then

Space exploration was a lot different when I was an astronaut, let me tell you. We'd light down on any planet we felt like, stick a flag in the dirt, and the rest of the day was ours to do as we pleased.

One of the troopers I flew with, a medic by the name of Persephone, she would always light out on her own, just itching for a chance to expose some of her skin. No, not in that way, kids. She'd get away from the rest of us and roll up one of her sleeves, expose it to local agents.

She was happiest, I think, when her skin was changing colors from some local airborne fungus on the attack, or when native bugs could be lured out to take a bite out of her. Her arms got more blisters than the rest of our feet in those spaceboots put together.

Her arm was exposed to some of the strangest substances I had ever seen. Once, for two weeks, it glowed in the dark. We finally forced her out of our shared bunkroom and she had to sleep in the nav-pit. Once the anti-inflammatories brought the glow down to night light levels, we let her back in.

Another time, she got this infestation of tiny bugs that liked to live just underneath the top three layers of skin. You have five layers of skin, kids, so this was underneath the stratum granulosum. Past the halfway point. Anyway, they were mostly harmless, she said, so she amused herself by pushing them around until they spelled things out. Got her initials done before the Captain forced her to decontaminate.

I wonder what she's up to these days. Probably has a family practice by now.

We came up with lots of games while "on the road." There was a lot of time to kill. Travel wasn't as fast then as it was now. We'd be inbetween planets for days. One of our favorite ways to pass the time was by playing toothpaste soccer.

Toothpaste soccer is much like regular soccer, but each player has a toothbrush and they scrub up their teeth with toothpaste. Then, a forward player is designated as having "the ball" and what you do is when you have to pass, you spit a sphere of toothpaste at another player. It's all low-grav, so you don't have to spit hard, just accurate.

Your teammate, to catch the pass, just has to get the toothpaste on them somewhere. Most guys would opt for their shirts or socks or something they wouldn't have to touch. It was considered bad form to get it on your face, even with the suites of antibiotics and vitamins they had us on.

I don't know how good you kids are at brushing your teeth, but when you brush for a long time, the foam acts as a retardant to your spit. It gets harder to spit, I'm saying. So you only have so many passes in you, no matter how vigorously you brush your teeth while on a scoring run. Gotta pace yourself.

The worst job you could have in this game is goalie. As you can imagine.

Posted by Michael at March 29, 2003 11:02 PM