We were all getting ready to sit down to dinner when the doorbell rang.
Being the youngest, I answered it. To my surprise, astronaut Edwin
"Buzz" Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, was standing on the
porch. He was wearing a nice suit and was smiling brightly. He looked
hungry!
"Aren't you Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut?" I asked, recognizing him from all the TV news moon-landing coverage.
"Yes, I am," he responded with a crisp nod. "I'm here for dinner...and
boy, does it ever smell good." He rocked a bit on his heels, looking
eager and expectant. Figuring that somebody must've invited him, I stood
aside and ushered him in.
"Buzz Aldrin's here, everybody," I announced to my astonished family
while fetching another chair from the kitchen and dragging it to the
diningroom table. I had to squeeze Buzz in between me and my sister.
The rest of the family had frozen in mid-motion at the sight of him and
watched as he sat down and spread a napkin in his lap. "I'm so hungry I
could eat a horse," he quipped.
Dad cleared his throat and spoke hesitantly. "Uhh...I was just about to
say the blessing, Mr. Aldrin. But perhaps you'd do the honors
instead."
"I'd be happy to," said Buzz. We all lowered our heads, and Buzz began
to speak in a low, sonorous voice. "Dear Lord...bless the moon and the
astronauts and spaceships and NASA, and Walter Cronkite, and those weird
little gremlins that come through the walls of our space capsules in
outer space and try to kill us. And bless Grandma and Uncle Spanky and
Boris Karloff and the Jackson Five and the brave plumbers who fix our
toilets so that we can relieve ourselves without having to go outside."
He looked around and smiled. "Amen."
"Amen," we all repeated nervously. Even though it was an honor to have a
famous astronaut eating Thanksgiving dinner with us, he was starting to
creep us out a little. And nobody knew why the heck he was there in
the first place.
Dad passed the turkey platter to our guest. Buzz held it in both hands
and regarded the golden brown turkey appreciatively. "This dead bird,
whose corpse has been roasted," he announced momentously, "will soon be
eagerly masticated by our gnashing teeth and drenched in our gushing
saliva. And then we will swallow it, beginning the strange, magical
digestive process that will eventually result in our bowels moving and
expelling--"
"Would you like some yams?" Mom interjected, hoping to bring a halt to Buzz's potentially graphic speech.
Buzz glanced at her and shook his head. "No, thank you. This dead
bird, whose corpse has been roasted," he muttered, trying to regain his
place, "uh, blah, blah, blah...magical digestive process..." His voice
took on its rich, confident tone once again. "Beginning the strange,
magical digestive process that will eventually result in our bowels
moving and ex--"
"Tell us about the moon landing!" Mom almost yelped.
For a few moments, Buzz looked at her as though she were some kind of
creature from Mars. Then his head seemed to clear a bit, and he
smiled. "Well," he said, "it was kind of like this." He laid the
platter down and stuck his hand up inside the turkey, lifting it up and
moving it around like some kind of ghastly hand puppet. "Let's say the
table is the moon's surface, and the space capsule is represented by
this dead bird, whose corpse has been roasted..." He stopped, a look of
confusion settling over his features. "We will soon be eagerly
masticating it with our gnashing teeth, and drenching it in our gushing
saliva..."
I didn't want to hear about that process again so I interjected. "What was it like walking around on the moon?" I asked.
Buzz brightened again. "Well, it was like this," he explained, now
using the impromptu turkey-puppet to represent himself on the moon's
surface. He minced it around on the table, bobbing it up and down
slowly as though semi-weightless, and weaving it deftly around between
the big bowl of mashed potatoes and a heaping platter of cornbread
dressing. "This is me," he added, nodding down at the turkey in case we
hadn't already grasped that. Then he reached over and grabbed my
nephew Danny by his suspenders and lifted him out of his highchair.
"And this is Neil Armstrong."
As we all looked on in horror, Aldrin "moon-walked" baby Danny around on
the table along with the dead turkey in what was probably the most
revolting "mission simulation" in aerospace history. Nobody knew what
to do, since the situation was entirely alien to us. Even my sister,
who was Danny's mother, was afraid to do anything to antagonize Buzz at
this point. And still the horrible display continued, as turkey and
baby took on the roles of the first two astronauts to walk on the moon.
"Please...please..." my sister finally managed to croak. "Please put him down."
Buzz looked at her as though she had two heads. "Put who down? Me or Neil?" he asked.
"PUT...THE BABY...DOWN!!!" she screamed at last, pounding her fists on the table with a clatter.
Buzz looked at the baby, then at the turkey. A strange sort of
realization began to creep over his face. "Well, I, uh..." he said
slowly. "I'm afraid I...don't really know...which is the baby...and
which is the dead bird...whose corpse has been roasted..."
"Not that again!" Mom shrieked, rising to her feet and grabbing her hair
with both hands. "NOT THE DIGESTIVE PROCESS STORY AGAIN!!!"
Silently, Buzz removed his hand from the turkey and placed it in the
highchair, and then gently lowered Danny onto the turkey platter. With
deliberate restraint, he crossed his hands in his lap and spoke softly.
"I thought you all wanted to know about the moon landing," he said with
self-pity and a faint air of reproach. "You asked me to describe it. I
did so, using whatever visual aids were available at the time. If
you'd wanted me to use different ones, you should have supplied them."
His eyes took on a dreamy look. "Walter Cronkite supplied me with a
neat-o toy spaceship and some little astronaut dolls that I got to keep,
and a very nice scale mock-up of the Sea of Tranquility. But all I had
here was this strange creature--" he indicated Danny, who was cooing up
at him in wonder--"and this dead bird, whose corpse has been roasted
and will soon be eagerly masticated by our gnashing teeth and drenched
in our gushing saliva--"
"I...don't...think...so," Mom groaned, clipping the words off bitterly.
"Not after you've had your hand stuck up inside it like that. We'll
not be 'masticating' that bird today, Mr. Aldrin. And after all the
trouble I went to...to..." At that point it all became too much for her
and she collapsed in a fit of convulsive weeping. Dad rushed over and
hurried her out of the room. "I want you out of here," he said hoarsely
to Buzz on his way past.
Buzz Aldrin took a deep breath, then shook his head as though he'd just
awakened from a brief nap. He looked around at us with a smile,
seemingly unaware of the travesty he'd just made of our now-ruined
Thanksgiving dinner, and continued where he'd left off. "Beginning the
strange, magical digestive process that will eventually result in our
bowels--"
My sister screamed and whisked Danny away, fleeing the room. Buzz
watched her exit with a perplexed look and then turned to regard me as I
sat trembling. Aside from the turkey, which was still sitting in the
highchair, it was just me and Buzz at the table now. I wished I were
somewhere else. Or more precisely, that Buzz were somewhere else.
Buzz picked up the turkey in one hand and a large sweet potato in the
other. "Would you like to see what a real NASA docking maneuver looks
like?" he asked with a grin.
"No," I said weakly. Then, summoning my courage, I added, "I think you should just leave."
"Oh?" said Buzz. "Well, thank you for a lovely meal." He rose from the
table and headed for the front door. Was he simply pretending that he
hadn't just totally disrupted everything, I thought, or was he genuinely
unaware? I would never know. Buzz disappeared out the door and out of
our lives forever.
That is, until he showed up for breakfast the next morning. You don't
want to know what he tried to "simulate" with the link sausage,
scrambled eggs, and our dog. Something to do with "pulling eleven G's"
or whatever. Anyway, for what it's worth, I don't think astronauts and
Thanksgiving go together very well at all.
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