Everybody but me, it seems, has seen that new Matt Damon movie, “The Martian.” It looks cool and I love science fiction, but I just can’t bring myself to buy a ticket.
I’m afraid it would be too painful.
Why? Because I’m still carrying the emotional scars of the three weeks I myself spent as a Martian.
It happened 50 years ago, in 1965. That was a bad year for me, even before I became a Martian.
I was a skinny kid — a year younger than most of my classmates — with a big mouth. That was a bad combination in my old neighborhood. My days consisted mostly of angering nuns and getting in fist fights while walking home from St. Isadore Elementary School — fights I usually lost. (I would say “fights I always lost” but for one glorious afternoon when I punched Chuckie Scraab in the face and broke his nose.)
At any rate, I was not popular.
So maybe it’s only natural my favorite holiday was Halloween. For one day out of the year, at least, I could become someone else, someone well-liked and popular. Like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman.
This was 1965, though, and America was locked in a space race with our sworn enemies, the Soviet Union. The godless Commies had sent Sputnik into Earth orbit nearly a decade earlier and we were determined to keep outer space American, the way the Good Lord intended.
The country was gripped with a space fever that has taken decades to cool. Maybe if we find bug-eyed mermaids on Europa that’ll happen again; who knows.
My point is I was as space crazy as the next kid. Most of my friends wanted to be astronauts, but not me. I longed for the life of a Martian, preferably a scary one with ray guns, the sort that could enslave all humanity and finally get me my revenge on the bigger kids who administered my daily beatings.
To make this happen, my sainted Irish mother spent countless hours sewing a very authentic-looking Halloween costume. Lots of shiny silver fabric, futuristic zippers and snaps, a special pocket for my ray gun; it was a work of art.
To complete the look, however, I needed green skin. Martians have green skin. Everybody knows this.
Sadly, my skin was a boring pinkish-beige, same as now. So the evening before Halloween, I filled the bathtub with warm water and stirred in several bottles of green food coloring. Several.
When I exited the tub after soaking for about an hour, my skin, my hair, everything, was green; real green. No part of me was not green.
I was the hit of the school during the Halloween parade the next day; my silver costume sparkled in the autumn sunlight, my green skin freaked out the little girls in my class in exactly the fashion I’d hoped it would.
Trick or treating that evening, everyone commented on my cool costume. I was the belle of the fourth grade ball.
Until the next morning. That’s when I learned green food dye doesn’t just wash off. It doesn’t scrub off. It doesn’t scrape off with washcloths, my mother’s facial cream, baby oil or 30-grit industrial-grade sandpaper.
Green stays.
It was at least three weeks before I regained my pasty Irish beige. In the interim, I was in about 30 fights over my non-Earthling status. Some big kid would make a Martian joke, I’d take the first swing, and 20 seconds later I’d be picking my green butt up off the pavement.
So, “The Martian?” I think I’ll give that flick a miss.
Too many memories, Earthling.
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