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September 01, 2006
To Infinity and Beyond
You know, tonight I just had a startling realization:
I am twenty-two years old and I have never been to space camp.
I know most (if not all) of you are scratching your heads right now. "Space camp?" What the hell's up with that? I blame it on nearly ten years of my life spent watching Nickelodeon game shows where the contestants were always rewarded with ultimate prizes like mountain bicycles, neon-glowing, light up LA Gear shoes, and the ominous and utterly cool one-week trip to space camp. C'mon, you know you remember it. All those hours spent with your eyes glazed over each and every episode of "Double Dare" has to register somewhere in your memory; it doesn't just rinse down the drain like those globs of green slime poured on the heads of the contestants.
I know now that if I were ever to redeem a space camp adventure, I'd be sorely disappointed. I mean, if they even still offer that kind of thing nowadays. You don't see wicked cool advertisements to the Johnson or Kennedy Space Center buffered between episodes of "That's So Raven" or "Kim Possible" on Saturday mornings. (Is that even what kids are watching on Saturday mornining television anymore? For some reason, that sounds so 2003 to me... Why am I totally out of the weekend cartoon orgy schedule? I used to live for that stuff when I was a kid--I was up at the crack of dawn watching everything in that crazy six hour block of shows designed to encourage consumerism and devote loyalty to brand name cereals like Lucky Charms and Corn Pops. Now I'm too busy either sleeping in or going to work to even think of spending the day that way. Maybe this is what they meant by finally reaching adulthood...) What the hell happened to the space camp fanatasy? Kids today are totally unaware of how cool that was.
I'm sure that the Millennium version of Space Camp is now an extremely condensed version of what I expected as a kid. Due to lack of interest and government funding, they probably just hand everybody a packet of those freeze dried Dippin' Dots (The ice cream of the future!) and take them 'round on a tour of a creepy graveyard hangar filled with the singed aluminum fragments of failed Gemini and Apollo missions. If the kids are really lucky, they just might be blessed with a pair of 3-D holographic glasses on their way out, complete with a stern warning not to stare directly into the sun.
Man, being twenty-something has really jaded me.
posted at 12:56 a.m.
