Once there was a mad moon.
But the moon had not always been mad.
Though she had always been blue, her spirits had not always been that way. This
was because the light the sun gave her was just enough to keep her nice and
warm, and just bright enough so that mommies and daddies could read a good
night story to their kids. Other times, she watched owners take their dogs out
for an evening walk, or young lovers walking in her light, hand in hand.
Before mummy and daddy were born, spaceships
started landing on her and people started walking on her. She loved having
visitors. The first person who walked on her, someone named Neil Armstrong,
said this was “one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.”
“Wow,” she thought. “I didn’t know it would
mean so much for people to visit me.”
These were fun times for the moon. Like
when someone draws on your back, the moon felt shivers of delight when people
bounced up and down on her surface. Neil Armstrong even stuck an American flag
on top of one of her mountains to show how proud America was to be the first
country to land on her surface. And in her own way, the moon shared in his
delight.
But other times she didn’t like being the
moon. The more people who came, the more flags were stuck in her surface, the
more noisy and crowded it became, and the more garbage they left behind. “Hey,”
she thought, “this is my house! Please stop messing up my house!” This made her
mad.
Meanwhile on earth, some of the scientists
who had visited the moon learned that it was she who made the oceans wave. When
the oceans were calm that was because the moon was calm. Then boys and girls
would come to the beach to swim, skip rocks and build sand castles. But every
now and again, the moon was mad. Then kids would stay away from the crashing
waves, rocks would be left un-skipped and castles unmade. In fact, except for
the odd dare-devil wind-surfer, at these times, everybody everywhere stayed
away from the mad moon’s waves.
Even spaceships flew past her without even
a glance. Though astronauts had come to visit, and some of them even returned;
many of them found bigger and better places to go. “Where are they going?” the
moon wondered. “Have they discovered something bigger and better?” For a while,
she was curious, but most of the tine, she was just lonely. The noise of
excited chatter among astronauts was distant history, she missed the feeling of
people tickling her surface, and even missed the garbage that people brought.
Now the biggest and best man-made thing in space, the International Space
Station was receiving all of the attention. She could see it sometimes, but at
others it was blocked by the earth. The only option she had now was her waves.
As people walked along the beach, would they see her waving?
Some time later, the Russians arrived and
stuck their flag in the ground. People who spoke a different language in a
different accent arrived more regularly. The moon was pleased to welcome her
new friends. But every once in a while, she remembers back to the first people
who landed on her surface. “What are they up to now? Are they off to bigger and
better things like Mars, Jupiter or learning about Saturn’s rings?”
So when you are at the beach next, watch
the waves. Is she angry, is she lonely. Go for a swim and let her give you a
hug. Watch her waving at you. And don’t forget to wave back.
