Friday, April 3, 2009

Prepare to be so, so jealous

What did you do Friday night?

Do not even bother to tell me what you did on Friday night. Whatever you did Friday night, it was not nearly as excellent as the totally legendary thing that I did on Friday night. On Friday night, I went with Robyn to Bongs & Noodles to get something, and while I was there, I realized that THERE WAS STARLAB.

If you never had StarLab, you missed out in a way that I cannot really even begin to explain to you. StarLab was the most amazing thing that ever happened to my elementary school self. It was this big, silvery inflatable dome that (in my day, though apparently not anymore) looked like it was made of duct tape. And your whole class would crawl inside and sit around the edges, while in the middle there was a projector, and it would project the night sky onto the ceiling of the dome. They could rotate it to show you the night sky at all different times of year, and if you were doing a mythology unit (we always seemed to be), they could connect the dots of the constellations, which again, if you haven't seen it, you can't appreciate how incredible this was. I have moped about how much I miss StarLab a number of times in my adult life, I can tell you.

AND BONGS & NOODLES HAD IT TODAY AND I WENT INSIDE.

And, yes, okay, it was not quite as legendary as it was when I was little, because the little children were screaming, and instead of stars they had a video about weather, but it was still pretty awesome. It was all cool and blowy inside, exactly like I remember, and the sides flapped up like I remember, and the video about weather went all over and up and around. Different, but mostly the same.

Incidentally, prior to the Bongs & Noodles guy assuring us that we were not too old for StarLab, Robyn and I also made lots of jokes like, Am I too big to go inside that? Which is another change from when I was little.

4 comments:

tim said...

Oh, we had that in my elementary school! They would set it up inside the library. It was like another world - I loved it.

Robyn said...

I feel like I was more restrained in there than I was when I was six. Progress!

Anonymous said...

argh. I made out with a boy named Nathaniel in a StarLab out in the Nevada desert. Fun fact.


....Robyn can speak for herself

Jenny said...

I can't believe you knew there was still StarLab and you didn't tell me! I thought StarLab was a thing of the past. Like horse-drawn hearses.