NEIL ARMSTRONG OR "BUZZ" ALDRIN?

Admittedly, this was a repressed memory until I read Jane's blog on brotherly abuse. I believe there is a direct correlation between the number of siblings you have and the number of strange and memorable (although some should be forgotten) events you can recall from childhood.

I'll leave out the names to protect the not-so-innocent...

I think this happened sometime in mid-late 1978 because Mom was still working full-time before the arrival of my youngest brother. Some would argue that it's not terribly wise to leave 6 kids home by themselves, but it was one of those po-dunk school holidays that still required Mom and Dad to work. However, Mom was no dummy: she knew us well enough to give us a mission, a chore to do. I think her thought process might have gone something like this, "At least the family room will be clean BEFORE they burn down the house." Even if we waited until the last 15 minutes before she and Dad came home, we would have at least accomplished SOMETHING of value that day.

Well, on this particular day, our orders from Mission Control included cleaning the kitchen cabinets. Remove all the contents, wipe down the doors and shelves, and (ideally) replace the contents a little more neatly than before they were removed. The mission seemed to go smoothly until this exchange occurred...

"Hey, Dena! Try this!" A bit of advice to the youngsters out there: nothing good EVER comes from a statement like that.

"What is it?" I asked while being handed a cup with a some liquid in it.

"It's Tang!" Funny, it didn't smell like Tang. Was it possible for Tang to "go bad"? I was 8—what did I know? [note: if you don't know what Tang is, look it up. You're on the internet for Pete's sake...]

"OK!" I said gullibly, gulping enough to consume all of the cup's contents, followed by serious spewing, and some 8-year-old tough-talk like, "You snot!"

Oh, it looked like Tang, but it had a little kick to it. Yeah, it was orange vodka, and so old and fermented that I'm pretty sure if Neil Armstrong had picked up a bottle of it on his way to the launch, this might have been what was left over.

I've never been a huge drinker, and this may very well be why. Well, that and learning the hard way when I was 5 that beer may LOOK like ginger ale, but it sure doesn't taste like it.

In case you're wondering, "Buzz" Aldrin did finish cleaning her share of the kitchen cabinets, but we left the "Tang" incident out of the debriefing session when the Commander came home from work.

Mission accomplished.