Moon walk memory: July 20, 1969

On this very evening, 53 years ago, two men walked on the surface of the moon for the very first time.
I was 11 years old, and a camper at Camp Mar-Ven in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.

The significance of the event was lost on us pre-pubescent youth, but we knew it must have been one of those “important events that we will always look back on and remember where we were”, because all of the campers were let out of our bunks, at what should have been “lights out”, and we were ushered in to the rec hall, each wearing our pjs, where a tiny black-and-white TV had been set up. The reception was so poor that someone had to stand next to the TV and continuously adjust the “rabbit ears” that served as the television’s antenna.

Campers and staff alike sat cross-legged, or sprawled, across the floor, in rapt attention of the event that was before us. I remember several of the campers and counselors and staff members. My cabin was particularly challenging, with juvenile delinquent Mitch, obese and bullied David, sensitive me, and my best friend, Doug, on whom I secretly had a crush, even though I was “dating” his 10-year old cousin, Karen. My bunk’s CIT (counselor-in-training), Jimmy, would comb his pubic hair in front of us. Which was bizarre, but, of course, pretty impressive to an 11-year old gay boy in-the-making, who was just beginnng to sprout hair in the proud places.

What I remember most about that night in 1969 was not the moon landing itself, but of many of the details surrounding our special dispensation to stay up late. Huddled around the tv screen, like 1920s hobos around a garbage can fire, we campers, boys and girls, ages 9-15, shared a sense of camaraderie that night. We didn’t know WHY it was special, but we knew it was special, because we were allowed to stay up late.

And when the broadcast was over, and we all ambled back to our respective cabins – sleepy, yet somehow wiser in the knowledge of life beyond Earth, we knew that nothing would ever be the same again, and that tomorrow would be a more knowing, and less naive, day than today had been.

It was the dawning of the Space Age. And now our horizons were so much broader, and our responsibilities so much greater, than those on just this planet.

Of course, none of thus knew that then. Tomorrow would be volleyball, and arts & crafts, and play rehearsal, and color wars. And we would go back to picking on some, and idolizing others.

Life, for a bunch of campers on Cape Cod, would go on just as it had been going on all summer. And tomorrow would be another day.

The earth kept spinning. Yet everything had changed.