The Moon Patrol Secret

On the way to school today, the moon was still out, full and glowing quite bright. The G-kids were quite noisy and boisterous and distracting, so I told them all to watch the moon ... because if they did, they just might see one of the Martians out on “moon patrol.”

"What are Martians?" the youngest asked.

"Martians ... those are the creatures that live on Mars," I explained.

”There's no such thing as Martians, Grammi,” said the oldest.

“Oh, contrare,” I replied. “The Martians patrol the moon for us. It’s their job to make sure there aren't any Aliens building secret moon bases up there.”

“You're teasing us!” they cried.


“Oh, no, I'm not, honest!” I replied. “You're just not supposed to know about the Martians. The government wants to keep it a secret, because they know that children sometimes forget that they can’t tell secrets and blurt them out. And if that happened, the Aliens would know! So it has to stay a secret. Grammi wasn’t even supposed to tell you, so you can’t tell anyone that you know about the Martians, or Grammi will get in trouble.”


One of them piped up and asked, “Can we tell our teachers?” “No,” I replied. “You can’t tell anyone.” Another piped up, “Can we tell our teachers that you told us but we don’t’ believe you?” “Yes, I think that would be okay.”


That seemed to pacify them, and they all stared up at the moon for some minutes, lost in contemplation, or maybe just looking to see if there really were any Martians up there.

Sure enough, another question soon came out, “But Grammi, what about the Jupi-nartians? What do they do?”



September 16, 2008