Aleta Myles - Big Ass Moon

 

 

Because it takes me a long time to make decisions, when I finally do, it's like a really big thing, a big deal. So, the first time that I decided to go camping, [audience laughter] I was like, “I should go camping in the middle of the desert in Israel.” [audience laughter] I don't know why I decided to do that. My parents were like, “I don't know what's wrong with her.” But I did. I was scared for a couple of reasons. When I first got there, it was great. It was amazing, the daytime was amazing. But at night, when you go camping, it's a different story. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I am used to our American moon that we have outside. It's like a [audience laughter] tiny, little communion wafer up in the sky. [audience laughter] But this moon over there was a big ass moon. [audience laughter] It was the biggest moon I had ever seen, and I was so scared. [audience laughter] I don't know if anybody else in my group was scared, but I was scared and I was like, “I'm not going to sleep, because there's no reason for a moon to be that close and be that big. It's going to do something to us at night.” [audience laughter] I was like, “I'm not going to sleep.” But I went to sleep, and I got up the next morning and the moon was gone, so I was glad for that. [audience laughter] 

 

But then, every day, we would get up and we would go hiking. That was really cool. We would learn about the geography of the land, and we would learn about the crops and nature and all of that. And I was like, “Yeah, this is really amazing.” And then, at night, we would go hiking, which that was different, because I'm like, “Why are we hiking at night? We don't need to do that.” [audience laughter] But we were hiking at night, and the stars would be out and it would be amazing and beautiful. And our tour guide, he would teach us about the different things that the ancient people of that time would do with the stars and how the stars would tell them, like where to go and different things like that. 

 

That was amazing for me, because I'm used to Siri telling me like, [audience laughter] “There's a McDonald's, five miles away or the weather is going to be 50 degrees.” So, this was all like this enlightening moment for me. I'm like, “The earth is really amazing, and it tells us things, and this is really great. It's amazing.” 

 

One of the nights, he was teaching us about the constellations. If you're in certain parts of the earth, you can see certain things in the sky. So, he was saying that the next night, we wouldn't be able to see the constellations he was telling us about, because big ass moon was coming back, [audience laughter] and it was going to be really bright and we weren't going to be able to see anything, because the moon is so bright out there, like that's the only thing that's out there. It's just like moon. [audience laughter] So, I was mad. I was like, “Finally, I'm not scared anymore of the moon, and of all these things.” I'm like, “I'm not afraid anymore.” 

 

And then, we weren't going to be able to see the stars, so I was really upset. The next night, the sun's going down, moon comes back up, she's there. There's a little dot that appeared on the moon, and I was like, “That's weird.” So, I go to the tour guide and I'm like, “There's a dot on the moon. What is that? [audience laughter] What is that about?” And he's like, “Oh, it's a cloud.” And I'm like, “Okay. Cool.” So, 20 minutes later, the cloud is getting bigger, and I'm like, “I'm not a meteorologist, [audience laughter] but I don't think that this is a cloud.” 

 

We sit there and we watch the entire big ass moon get covered. It's a lunar eclipse. The stars fill the sky. I have never seen so many stars, all the stars. Stars that had gone out millions of years ago, they came back [audience laughter] and they were like, “We’re going to shine.” [audience laughter] It was so bright. All the constellations we saw, every constellation, everything was there. I was so glad in that moment that it takes me so long to make a decision that I decided that I would go camping for the first time, and be in the middle of the desert in the middle of Israel and see this lunar eclipse that I only could see on that side of the world at that time, that I was just glad that I'm a person that it takes long for me to make decisions and I procrastinate and that can sometimes turn out to be a good thing.