Day Twenty-two - Dead stars

What did I want to when I grew up as a kid? At first, I wanted to be an astronaut, and later I wanted to be a lawyer - both for very different and yet similar reasons. There were two inciting incidents for me wanting to be an astronaut, and as far as I can recall, they would  have happened around the same time frame : I was in the third grade still, and one day we took a school trip to the planetarium. Now, I'd never heard of a planetarium, I had no idea what it was, and my wee self's mind was just blown away. I couldn't believe that I could see the stars, and the planets, and the comets - the whole cosmos was spread above me in a way that I never thought would have been possible. Oh, and there were also the northern lights as well, something that to this day I long to see in person. Then there was that fateful day when one weekend I was sat in front of the TV just after my family had lunch, and we had this habit of watching this show that played the top charting hits, when suddenly I heard for the first time what would be a song that became pretty much anthemic to me all throughout my childhood - Jean Michel Jarre's 'Fourth Rendez-Vous'. I couldn't comprehend, really, what kind of instrument he was playing, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen before, but my mother explained to me that he was playing a synthesizer. Another word I'd never heard before, though I'd certainly had listened to a lot of synth based music, though I never knew so then. The video, of course, had images of the Challenger Space Shuttle that tragically broke apart a little over a minute into its flight, and the album is dedicated to the memory of the crew, who all lost their lives on that sad day. 

These two events combined - in addition to a predilection I already had for science fiction - really made me want to be an astronaut. And then, I don't know if that if it was that much longer after I started nurturing the idea of going to space, 'L.A. Law' started being broadcast on TV, and frankly, it seemed to me to be a far easier thing for me to accomplish - being a lawyer rather than an astronaut. And I confess, I was completely swept up by the glamour of that office, of that L.A. that to me was as alien as Jupiter or Mars. It was henceforth my main goal in life - though I wasn't ever a brilliant student, and not much longer after the time frame of which I write about, I'd become a pretty mediocre one, in me there was always that drive, that will to study law. I'm not really sure where I lost that will, though. Maybe because sometime in the very early 90's my mother decided to go back to school and study law herself, and when I realized how much work it would be and how hard it was, I sort of gave up.