Escaping Earth's problems

With gas skyrocketing, the continuing worry in Iraq and a historic election on the horizon, I've been trying to answer the Next Big Question in my life, which is, and I am not making this up: What should I name my space ship?

After some thought at the dinner table the other night, I came up with the noble title of (drum roll please): Corn Dog Four.

Oh sure, it's the sort of name that would make engineers at NASA cringe and spit their milk all over their control boards, but Corn Dog Four isn't going to be a NASA ship, it's actually going to fly, land and take me and my family to a galaxy far, far away when things here go truly belly up and Republicans have a majority in the House and the Senate and the White House. Wait a minute — that already happened.

Go ahead, pinch me. I must have survived!

Whew!

My "fascination" with spaceships began early in the fourth grade in Mrs. Benedict's class. Mrs. Benedict was a brunette with a pleasant face and a nice smile at Churchville Elementary. We generally had the run of the place and I know this because one day in art class while we were having the run of the art room the principal came down and gave the entire class a tongue lashing that peeled the paint right off our projects.

Myself, I was a goody-two shoes that wore button down sweaters and was quite shocked that I would get yelled at with such force by a grown man of his size and stature. Surely, he's not yelling at me, I thought. I looked behind me to see who was behaving badly and there was no one there.

That's when I decided to get to work on this spaceship idea. A 10-year-old minding his own business — painting a nice picture of the ocean for his mother shouldn't have to take such abuse. Churchville Elementary, I'm out of here. I immediately began plans to create a spaceship.

Problem was, that weasel Randy and his friend Frank (names have been changed because weasel Randy now owns a pornographic video outlet in my hometown) had already started on a spaceship of their own. They already had plans drawn up and a fuel system devised (their spaceship would run on corn husks and barbecue sauce) and they made it clear that I was not invited.

I worked on my own spaceship idea for a few days and then gave it up entirely, especially after I discovered that I could barely run a pair of scissors through construction paper, never mind build anything that would remotely fly.

So here I am like 31 years later thinking about space and spaceships again because things look like they could go decidedly belly up in the next few years. But you know what? I don't really like space. It looks lonely and cold up there. But I can hack it. I hope.

Where's my button-down sweater?

Chris Peterson is the photographer for the Hungry Horse News.