I Was A Moon Baby

There are certain events that bind a generation. Where-were-you-when moments that are seared into our minds. 9/11, for example. The night the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS (well, maybe you have to live in Boston to love that one). Any number of assassinations. And the night Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Me, I don't so much remember the moon landing, but I do know exactly where I was: Burbank Hospital. In Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Being born. It's safe to say my mom doesn't remember much about the landing, either.

Now, to be honest, I wasn't actually born during the moon landing. Mom was in labor with me when it happened, but then I changed my mind. There is debate over whether I was planting my feet at the exit and stubbornly insisting on being a Leo, or whether the flyboys brought my soul with them from outer space. But whatever the reason, I didn't technically see the light of day till splashdown.

Still, I get moon presents a lot. Commemorative books, patches, posters, all that jazz. I have quite a collection by now, and it's all pretty cool. I even have a book signed by Walter Cronkite. But my favorite of the menagerie is my first one.

This:

They gave him to me in the hospital. That scabby bit on his helmet (or whatever you might call it) is from the time mini-Destructo managed to break off his smiley head, and it just rattled around inside the helmet until Destructo's Daddy figured out a way to cut a hole in Moon Baby's helmet and stick his Kewpie loaf back on.

(He's not really Kewpie. He's actually Plakie. Whatever that is. I don't care. I love him.)

Anyway, so ornament #4 is a reproduction of the commemorative Moon Landing stamp that came out in 1999. It weighs a million pounds, so I have to hang it on a very sturdy branch, somewhere in the middle of the tree. By the time I find a stable place for it, it's always so obscured by other branches you can't see it anymore. But that's okay. Contrary to all conspiratorial so-called evidence, I know ornament #4 is truly there.

Unless...

Is it just a coincidence that the name of the hospital where I was born is Burbank?