This morning my mother was leaving for Nevada, to go to her step-mother’s funeral. We had all gathered in her living room to see her off and I was lounging in a chair, barely conscious and hardly coherent from the flu. I was just sort of vaguely listening to my mother and sister talking about airport security.
Then they began talking about how we don’t need any airport security, because 9/11 didn’t really happen the way it had been portrayed.
From there, they moved onto JFK’s assassination and how that was a conspiracy, too.
And then my sister started talking about the moon.
“When I told my coworkers that I didn’t think we’d been there, they all looked at me like I was an alien!” my sister laughed.
Blearily, I picked my head up from the chair to squint at her. “Oh my God, you people are f—ing insane.” (I get foul-mouthed when feverish.)
This offended my mother quite a bit. Not the use of the F-word, but the fact that I questioned the sacred conspiracies. She started talking about how we’ve done thousands of nuclear tests over the years and if there is any application for anything we can do, then we will do it, but since we’ve only been to the moon once (this citation of only one trip makes it clear she really knows a lot on the subject) and we could really benefit from military moonbases or something, this proves we were never there at all. Because if we could go to the moon, we would have gone repeatedly.
I knew they both embraced the idiotic 9/11 conspiracy theories, because they forced me to watch every conspiracy documentary that’s been released on the topic. I wasn’t particularly surprised my mother believed that there was a conspiracy surrounding JFK’s assassination. But the moon? The flippin’ moon?
I just stared at them for the longest time, mouth gaping. They demanded to know why I’d believe something as crazy as people landing on the moon. Because I live in reality? Because I want to be a functional member of society?
I pointed out that the conspiracy theorists are almost always completely ignorant of the science involved, or are hobbyists at best. I pointed out that human nature, being what it is, would have had someone talking, at some point. Far too many people were involved in the moon landings for them to have all been in on some hoax, and for them all to be silent. It didn’t matter. My mother said she thought everyone had been duped, and only a small collection of people in charge knew what was going on and the astronauts themselves.
“And isn’t it convenient that all of the astronauts are dead now?” my sister added.
“Out of twelve people who’ve walked on the moon, only three are dead,” I countered.
“Well, Buzz Aldrin is a drunk,” my mother non-sequitured.
At this point, it was time for my mother to leave, so I just shook my head, ignored it all, and gave her a hug goodbye.
I can only hope when I’m no longer feverish I find out this was all some sort of flu-induced delirium.
