just back from a trip to mars

Just back from a trip to Mars

By David Verveer

I am just back from a round trip to Mars, (on the way we visited also the moon, and some other outer space regions). My travel companion, my grandson Tom, still on vacation from school, was so kind to hold my hand in frightening moments, but in general, I must say, the trip was wonderful and enlightening. I would have preferred a newer model of space ship, as the one we traveled in was a rather shaky affair, but for the low fees, we should not complain. I thought, however, they would serve some drinks, half way, but no, we went directly up, but wasted some time on the moon, which is really a pity of your time, nobody there, dry like hell and such a silence, the only thing we heard was the guide, telling us what we saw.

Of course, you understood by now that we visited the planetarium in Tel Aviv, and participated in a simulated flight upwards. But this made me think, my grandson is now 9 years old (9 and a half to be precise), and he, most likely, will participate in such trips when he gets to my venerable age (passed 50 years, a long time ago).

When I was a kid of his age now, we did not have TV, or transistor radios, or mobile phones, and if you wanted to phone, you had to go to the sole public phone in the neighborhood, but of course, to whom would you call, nobody had a phone those days. We had a huge radio, standing in our living room, with a station indicator, on which local (one) and foreign stations were written, I don't think it broadcasted the entire day.

Still, we never got bored, like the kids of today, we played, read and enjoyed ourselves with primitive equipment but time available was always too short. Today, my grandkids continuously get new electronic equipment, from play station to hi-fi, what ever that might be, but surprisingly, they get bored, with more than 5 TV stations for kids alone, with DVD (video is already out, not to mention tape recorders, or gramophone players), and their own computer, with non limited sources of sites for kids, and still I hear Saba (Granny in Hebrew) I am bored!

I feel like a prophet, when I imaging my grandson, with his grandchildren go for a weekend to Jupiter, where he rented a solarium for the weekend (included of course a rented rocket for visits to the surrounding moons). There, grandmother prepared for them a take away breakfast) and their favorite entertainment program, injected through their toes, when the youngest child tell his granny, that this antique manner of traveling bores him, his friends from school flown with his parents on robototic plasma waves. Sound wild, remember that if somebody in those days, would have prophesized that you would be able to talk and see each other through the computer (what is a computer in heavens name?), and that it won't cost you a cent (if you don't take into account that your equipment and your connection to internet cost lots of money, and that you have to replace after a year your equipment, because it is not anymore capable to cope with the basic requirements).

O.K, I have to stop now, because my daughter has just sent me by email, pictures of their trip with their kids to Canada, and I have to figure out, how to open them and view them, together with my wife.