Michael Collins was my favorite astronaut when I was a kid. I realize this may not make sense without the self-mythologizing of a long, discursive thread, so here we go. 1/

When I was ages 9-11, I sent more mail than ever again in my life. My 4th grade teacher had us write letters to learn how to a) use the mail system; and b) request information. I used this as an excuse to request an autographed pic from Harrison Ford. (Which I still have.) 2/

My dad was a public librarian, and he told me to use TIS, aka Telephone Information Service, which you could just call and ask any question and a reference librarian would call back with the answer. Google before Google's entire workforce were even born. And it was free. 3/

I still remember the librarian dictating the address for my Star Wars God, Harrison Ford, and how my 9-year-old hands shook writing it down. (It was on West Pico, here in the city where I would move to 40 years later.) But that was merely ONE letter. 4/

See, Star Wars had led to an obsession with all things Space, and that had led to my discovery of a thing called NASA. So I called TIS and asked for where I could write NASA and request things. I sent a letter to NASA. 5/

Two weeks later they sent me a heavy 9x12 envelope stuffed with space photos, spec sheets on rockets and other vehicles, astronaut bios, etc. One of the things in that packet was a signed headshot of Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, aka The Guy Who Never Left The Module. 6/

I decided, mainly based on the fact that he was in that first packet, that Michael Collins was my favorite astronaut. I pinned the official photo of this bald man on my wall and put the rest of what they'd sent in a box I labeled my NASA FILE. Then I sent another letter. 7/

See, at the time, NASA was in an interim period where they'd GONE to the moon. They'd launched Voyager. And everyone was saying, "But what now, NASA? What have you done *lately*?" NASA knew the children were the future of its program, so if a kid requested info, they'd oblige. 8/

I wrote them every month. And two weeks later, there was a heavy packet. Here's what I want to stress: each packet they sent was different from the last. Whoever was sending them was actually keeping track of what they'd sent, so they'd continue to engage a budding scientist. 9/

I hope to god a bunch of actual budding scientists wrote to NASA for packets in those days, because the truth is, I was a moron. I had no aptitude for math, and even fairly childlike physics concepts were were utterly beyond me. I loved space, but I didn't understand it. 10/

It's partly the way my brain works (i.e., poorly) and partly that I had pretty severe ADHD, which was a thing no one knew how to treat in the '70s and '80s. Thank god I found Tolkien and fantasy, which required exactly zero understanding of how anything worked. 11/

But all my life, I've retained a deep fondness for the bald guy who never left the module but who also got those fancy fuckers to the moon and back without killing them, and if you know me, you know that's kind of who I grew up to be. 12/

Rest in space, Michael Collins. I loved you. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/509599284/forgotten-astronaut-michael-collins-dies