Apollo Commander or Superman?

The school bus  pulled up outside the science and space exhibit in Los Angeles, filled with two classes of noisy fifth graders.  Bradley pushed his way to the exit door so he could get off first, but it didn’t matter, he was stuck walking behind the teacher, who stopped at the entrance door for a head count. Once they were inside, he spotted the Apollo command module. It looked amazing, just like on TV, very big and impressive. He split off from the group and ran up a metal stairway to peer through the window and into the cabin where three Astronauts would spend days, maybe weeks on their journey to the moon and back.

Bradley’s look into the space capsule terrified him. 3 grown men had to crawl into that space where they could barely move. It made him think of a womb filled with triplets who needed to be born but couldn’t.  His hands got sweaty, and his heart raced. He looked around, then he looked in the window again. Maybe the real capsule is bigger, this is just a fake. He pounded down the stairs and spotted a docent wearing a uniform. “Is there another Apollo?” he asked, his voice high-pitched and wavering.

“Huh?” said the docent, who was an old man with a stiff neck. “No, this is exactly like the real Apollo, the one that goes into space. What would you like to know?”

“It’s too small inside!” Bradley said. He complained to the man as if he it was his fault. Then he backed away, turned and made it to the end of the line that was his tour group.  He followed numbly, not caring about the rest of the exhibit.

That ended his dream of going into space as a U.S. Astronaut. He felt hopeless, and tagged along at the end of the line for the rest of the tour. There was no need to  make A’s now, and he soon became bored. Then he started getting into trouble with Billy from down the street. They threw rocks through windows and started dumpster fires, and stole some magazines from a drug store, Playboy and Marvel Comics.

Bradley started reading the stolen comic books and got caught up in the story of Superman coming to Earth as a baby from another planet. That hit him so hard he couldn’t sleep, and he looked at the pictures over and over.  When he did finally sleep he was dreaming about being Superman. That was it! Becoming like Superman would be much better than being an astronaut sitting in a stupid space capsule looking out a window at nothing.

He was setting himself up for a mission that would be even more difficult to succeed.