forty days and forty nights

[kespernorth]

When I was sick as a child, I would take the tiny 70s-vintage color TV into my room and watch PBS while sitting in bed. I remember a made-for-PBS special about a group of children being raised on a colony world of Earth where it rained all the time and the skies were always gray. The sun would come out over the settlement only every ten years or so, so most of the children had never seen direct sunlight in all of their lives. But once in a great while, the sun would peek through for a few scant minutes, and it would be a day of celebration and rejoicing.

I felt like one of those children, shocked and confused, as I sat in a dentist's chair this morning and saw, for a few fleeting moments, clear blue sky. A FedEx 757 flew through the window-framed view as I thought to myself "What the hell is wrong with the sky?"

Oh. It's supposed to look like that. I forgot.

---

My other moment of weirdness today was on the bus ride home from class. I was almost home; the 49 was passing by Broadway Market, pulling up to the stop outside the QFC, when a spindly man (wearing heavy rouge, eyeshadow and lipstick, a ragged and uneven blue-dyed goatee, tight tight shorts and a pink sweater with a scarf thrown around his neck) minced up to the bus, smiled madly and leaned out and tapped the window of the bus right in front of my face with a long thin stick made of light, flexible wood, like the Fairy Godmother bestowing pixie dust on a weary, virtuous stepsister.

I was startled, and since startlement leads to stress, and I don't need more stress, I then became annoyed. But I stopped myself and thought: it wasn't a harrassing gesture. It was really kind of nice, in a scary, insane sort of way. And it made me feel a bit better about what was generally a pretty unpleasant day.

Comments

[archmage.livejournal.com]

Dude, I remember that bit. Them standing in the chamber with goggles on, getting some sort of light exposure to make up for the lack of sunlight...

[lintilla.livejournal.com]

Ahh yes. That was adapted from a short story (I want to say Asimov, but I could be wrong). We watched that in my seventh grade English class, and it seriously made me cry.

[fubarobfusco.livejournal.com]

Bradbury. "All Summer in a Day." And yeah.

[morgyne.livejournal.com]

Is that the one where the boy (I think?) gets locked in the closet and doesn't get to see the sun?

[endorphan.livejournal.com]

It was a little girl, who wasn't liked by the rest of the class.
The others, when they realized that she'd been denied the sun, brought her roses.
The others hadn't liked her because she was from Earth, and remembered the sun, and talked about it.
I remember empathising seriously with the little girl.

[lintilla.livejournal.com]

Same with me. Thus the crying in class. My teacher was perceptive enough to grab me on some fake pretext and protect me from at least some of the inevitable teasing after that. :/

[kespernorth.livejournal.com]

I knew someone would remember this! Awesome.

[luchog.livejournal.com]

Bradbury had some seriously dark moments; and that was definitely one of his darkest.

[(Anonymous)]

A *few*? How about the one with the elderly couple who make a game of trying to kill each other?

[lintilla.livejournal.com]

Haha, knew I'd be wrong. ^_^ Sadly, it resonated especially strongly with my 12 year old self.

[calandria.livejournal.com]

My elementery school had "enrichment" classes twice a week during the middle of hte day. My third grade year, I chose the science fiction class - they had us read the story. It made me cry as well - because I identified so closely with her.

totally OT...

[gothkittyn.livejournal.com]

Are you going to be stopping by RustyCon at any point? Haven't seen you in *forever*

Re: totally OT...

[kespernorth.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. NorWes, for sure. But I had to recover from work this weekend.

[teneniel.livejournal.com]

I think I actually know the guy you were talking about on Broadway. I picked him up in the ambulance a few times.

He calls himself "Lord Valkyrie."