I was loading up the car with blankets, jackets and other warm stuffs.
A case of beer was in the trunk and water was boiling and steeping the little brown mushrooms.
A lady was out walking her dog, it was about midnight and she asked, “Hey, you heard about them meteors?”
I nodded and said that I was going out to the mountains, the fields to watch.
“Well, I just saw a couple over there,” I said.
Just then a big streaking comet flew by in the dark night, running the course of its light.
The peak was supposed to be between 4-5 a.m.
I’d been talking about the shower for days, preparing and searching for psychedelic helpers for the event.
In telling others and talking about it, I was amused several times when people would ask where the meteor shower was – I would frequently answer, “Outer space.”
We drank down the bars until last call and headed out to a friend’s somewhere out towards Greeneville.
My tea, mixed of one part mushroom water and two parts mandarin orange pekoe tea, was passed around while we waited for the largest meteor storm since 1966.
The usual things were going on, giggling, amazement at the size of the poisonous cat, playing with a rope squirrel and chewing up more little blue caps. I hate it when they get all stuck in your teeth.
Yuck.
Soon enough the comets became more and more frequent. The balls of ice and dust debris darting through a dark blue, clear night.
So calm a night that as the comets streaked by they seemed to leave ripples in the heavens.
Several were big and red, the tails leaving the sky aflame. Gradually more and more showed up, it looked like the scene in Star Wars when all the Ti-fighters and X-wings were fighting over the Death Star. The Emperor must have been tripping, trying to build his own planet … huh, well Skywalker and the rebels showed him, didn’t they?
Lying out in the wet field, the candles falling down, I came to the realization that I would be remiss in not wishing on everyone of the these shooting stars. Rarely do you get to wish on one and here were hundreds for me to dream with.
So I tried to wish on as many as possible.
It must have been a good 10 minutes that I wished and wished ’til I had nothing to wish for, so I just started thinking of things like, “I wish they would make a peanut butter Snickers, I wish Wal-Mart would go out of business, I wish orgies weren’t so rare, I wish I had been bit by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker, I wish I hadn’t of eaten that last handful.”
We lay there and the sun rose, glazing the hills with purple and orange.
It was over, the sky too light for any more of 4.5 billion-year-old balls of ice and debris.
Just have to wait ’til the next big one, which scientists say won’t be till 2099.

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