When I was eleven, I was given an opportunity.

An opportunity some kids spend the length of their pre-adolescence wishing for and never receive. Fourteen days living the dream.

Space Camp.

No exaggeration, it was everything it is rumored to be. Two weeks of full, hot Florida days doing the “exploration, simulation and discovery” of spacey goodness and dipping our toes into all the benefits our nation’s last pioneers enjoyed. Imagine top gun, full of pre-teens, no competition and no Kenny Loggins. Sweet flight suits everyday. The backstage tour of every museum, lab, building site and control room we saw in Apollo 13. I can say I sat in the seat of a freaking rocket.

A fortuitous event to say the least.

So what does this 11-year-old do with this god-granted moment in time? Does he spend it furthering his aeronautical education? Does he learn the intricacies of jet propulsion? Perhaps a moon bounce or two? Sure, all those things and probably even more that escape me presently.

But do I remember any of it?

No.

My memory of space camp is dreading the night because it induced an illness I suffered from for the majority of campy days- home sickness. A rush of sadness, panic and isolation sweept over my baby fat wrapped body and I could barely hold it together. A Hardly eating, sobbing in the sheets, lonesome little tyke.

I’m quite positive there could have been some first rate summer love in a young man’s destiny too- squandered.

In retrospect I get that “youth is wasted on the young” feeling. I want to walk right up to this young man and shake the ever-loving snot out of him and demand this blubbering fool tighten it up. But alas, as with so many childhood moments, we can only look back and passively regret. We didn’t know and we were simple.

My parents still have the patented space camp video, an original form of reality televsion, that documents a young man’s ascension through the ranks of a nerded up summer camp. I watch it and want to try again.

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