You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I kissed my 6-year-old son good-bye and with fatherly pride watched him walk into his classroom.
As I walked down the stairs, I felt a gentle tapping on my shoulder. I turned to see a handsome woman smiling at me. She spoke in a musical European accent. “Excuse me, sir. You are his father, no?”
“Yes,” I replied, and returned her smile.
“My son and yours are now good friends,” she said.
I smiled patiently, knowing there was more to this chance meeting than this casual introduction.
“Tell me, sir, is it true you are an astronaut? Are you really an astronaut? Because your son says all the time that you are an astronaut.”
I nearly tripped on the stairs as I laughed. All at once I admired my son’s imagination and wondered if I would ever be able to live up to his fantasy of his father the astronaut. “No,” I replied. “I am a psychologist and a psychoanalyst.”
“Oooh,” said the mother. “Then you really are in outer space.”
“No,” I said, smiling. “I work in inner space, in deep inner space.”
We exchanged smiles and I turned and hurried to my office at mission control on Central Park West.