My First Real Kiss (Or The First Time I Played Tonsil Hockey) -- A Tale Of My Existence

Writer's Note: The following personal story contains descriptions of "fluff-level" young teenage romance (kissing and physical touching) and PG-13 level content. If you're not mature enough to deal with that, then find another article. 

A few years ago this blogger told y'all two personal short stories about love and Valentine's Day, which were received quite well. The stories I told were both highly viewed, and I admit a little embarrassing. Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that my personal experiences with love on Valentine's Day are not very spectacular in the romantic department and never have been, but they did make for entertaining stories.

The first of those was the story of my first kiss which was given to me by a female classmate in 2nd grade at age 7. It wasn't a particularly romantic experience (we were both kids after all) and it was a one-and-done moment in the annuals of my early years. I only remember that brief meeting of lips so well because it happened on Valentine's Day.

But what about my first real kiss?

By that I mean the first time really swapping spit. Canoodling. Snogging. Pashing. Soul kissing. What the French call your first baiser d'amoureux.

That's right folks, I'm talking about your first real galocher. Florentine kiss. French kiss. Your first real passionate, erotic, intimate kiss with tongues and everything.

Do any of y'all remember your first real kiss? Odds are good almost every one of y'all remember that first time you truly sucked face with someone memorable in your teenage years -- and for good reason.

According to research in a 2012 study by the University of Toronto people remember things that are emotionally arousing quite vividly and this experience is imprinted in the mind. This is why people can remember intricate details of something that happened long ago but not what they ate for breakfast. According to the research more than 90% of all people vividly remember the details of their first kiss.

The mouth is one of the body's main erogenous zones, with more nerve endings that people have on the tips of their fingers. Not only does the human body have a high concentration of nerve endings in the lips, but the lips themselves have one of the thinnest layers of skin in the body. This results in extra amplified sensation. In short, your body gets more information and pleasure from kissing than just about any other kind of physical touching.

Add to the the fact that kissing also results in the release of intoxicating hormones like dopamine and endorphins in the brain which promote pleasure and relaxation. As a result the specific details of your first romantic kiss are more likely to be etched in your memory forever; possibly even more so than all the details of your first lovemaking experience.

I got my first real kiss from a girl on the evening of Saturday, November 17, 1990. The reason I remember that specifically was because it was at the end of the regular NCAA college football season and I'd finished watching the Clemson Tigers defeat the USC Gamecocks in what is practically a yearly tradition at this point in that particular rivalry. That and I looked up the date of the game for this article.

Actually at then 14 years old I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about sports, though my Grandpa Billy (God rest his soul!) got me hooked on that particular college football rivalry game as a life-long fan of the University of South Carolina.

So after watching that game, and not being honestly shocked by the outcome -- a total shutout, the "Chicken Curse" striking again -- I more-or-less decided to hang out with my sister and a friend of hers from junior high (these days we'd call it middle school -- yeah kinda showing my age here) that was spending the night with us that weekend.

For the sake of the story, let's call her Stacey -- not her actual name which I won't disclose because she's married and she's also still friends with me on social media. I did get her permission to tell this story, which was pretty cool.

Now Stacey, like my sister at the time, was a year behind me at the same school in 7th grade. She was also year younger than me, but already a somewhat well-developed teenage girl -- or at least what my 14 year old self would have considered "well-developed" (meaning she was already wearing a real bra as opposed to a trainer like my other sister's friends at the time). An "early bloomer" as my mom would say.

At age 14 I was still stuck in that transition period that all of us were going through in those middle school years when we were no longer kids, but not really on our way to being adults yet either. At the time I was still rushing home after school to watch cartoons like the original G-1 Transformers series, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Ducktales (Whoo-Whoo), and Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers, but also just now really beginning to pay attention to all those spicy adult scenes in the slasher movies that I always previously zoned out on waiting for Jason Voorhees to chop up some movie-stupid teenagers with a machete, or some other weapon.

My earliest introduction to actual sex at that time, beyond sex ed classes in sixth grade, had been sneaking peeks at the raunchier scenes from Ralph Bakshi's Fritz The Cat and the original 1981 Heavy Metal sci-fi anthology.

To put it mildly at the time I was only beginning to really notice the physical changes in the opposite sex (and to a lesser degree some members of my own sexual orientation) and the act of sex itself was still a somewhat elusive idea to me in terms of my long-term focus and not the obsession it would become to most teenagers in mid-to-late teen years. 

All that being said at first I wasn't really paying them much attention -- aside from being a bit annoyed by the two of them being giggly and interrupting me watching TV in the living room.

That wasn't to say that my early-hormone-driven 14 year old self didn't keep sneaking peaks at Stacey's breasts. They were hard for me to miss since they were big and she wore a dark t-shirt that outlined them pretty well. The fact she didn't wear a bra at the time was also clearly evident too.

Now being young, inexperienced, and completely oblivious to a lot of things at that age regarding the opposite sex; I pretty much thought my shy glances towards her bouncy fun-bags* were going unnoticed by Stacey.

Yeah, right.

Stacey started to get flirty with me and, being the totally inexperienced, anti-social kid that I was, I responded the best that I could....which I confess was far from cool. She would converse quietly with my sister, both of which would look over at me from the corner of the room and start giggling.

Needless to say, I wasn't amused.

Later on, after more giggly whispers, Stacey wanted me to start hanging out with them. Since the football game was over and I honestly had no other plans that evening except for more television, I suggested some movies.

As we sat on the living room couch to watch horror movies, Stacey sat right next to me between me and my sister, but much closer to me and giving me a much closer view of her chest area. Looking back now, I know that was just what she wanted, but at the time I just thought I was lucky A-F.

Having her close to me like that was also having an effect on me that I can't exactly describe if I want this article to remain "family friendly" but every young male at that age knows what I'm talking about. My only concern at the time was that I hoped Stacey wouldn't notice, and I was very thankful to be wearing extra loose jogging pants at the time. All the same when my sister got one of the large blankets out to cover up with and offer us the other one to share, I didn't hesitate even though I wasn't cold at all.

Stacey and I sat there with a blanket over our laps watching one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (can't really remember which one) and at some point we began holding hands beneath the blanket and then she leaned against me. Needless to say I was in total shock that she was this close to me, never mind that she seemed to enjoy being so. Again I was very thankful that blanket was where it was positioned.

Then my sister had to get up and use the bathroom and get more snacks, leaving me and Stacey along together.

Stacey looked at me and then asked me if I've ever "Frenched" before. I shook my head and quietly answered, "Not really." Then she bit her lip, leaned in and kissed me. I remember responding to it and then out mouths opened and our tongues lashed together.

To the best of my recollection, I felt my heart pounding really fast. I even remember the small noise she made in her throat that told me she was enjoying herself too. We went on like that for what felt like a few seconds before she pulled away smiling.

Then I remember something even better happening. Stacey turned her body so she could sit in my lap (which turned out not to be very comfortable right then) and put herself in a better position for a second and longer kiss. While we swapped spit the second time, Stacey took my hand and put it under her shirt, letting me have a handful of what felt like paradise.

If my heart was pounding hard before, it felt ready to explode just then. I could also feel her heartbeat beneath my hand and it was going fast too. That was a feeling I wouldn't forget.

A minute later my sister was coming back and she quickly went back to sitting next to me and pretending the last couple minutes didn't happen, although she kept looking at me out of corner of her eyes and grinning. I'd hope that my own face didn't look too goofy either the rest of the night.

That would be the highlight of the evening. An hour later they went to my sister's room and maybe stayed up longer talking and laughing about who knows what -- hopefully not me, but I was sure I came up in the conversation somewhere. As for me, I went to my room and tried to play video games, even though my mind was racing over what happened and what it might mean.

The next day Stacey and I were alone together again on my front porch. Nothing really happened, except she did let me know that she was only messing around with me the night before. I told he I knew, and I asked her if I was a good kisser. She smiled and nodded. Then everything was pretty much cool between us. I was back to watching television and cartoons later that day.

That's "romance" in early teen years for y'all.

Years later the two of us would talk about it and Stacey would confess that she wanted to see what I would do with her and how far I would go. That she'd been as anxious and curious as I was, but neither of us were going to really go much further than kissing and copping feels.

Both of us were 13 and 14 respectively at the time and two young people who were completely new to the idea of sexuality and had no clue what we were doing. At that age I think we both assumed that the opposite sex had more awareness of what to do than they actually did.

Also it was the start of the 1990s, and while today it seems that popular culture in America pushes for younger people to have more knowledge of sexuality -- far more so than I think they actually should in point of fact! -- at the age of 14, the idea of getting a kiss from a girl, never mind anything else, would have been a highlight of my existence.

Sadly, Stacey never really spent the night over again after that. A few weeks later her and my sister had some falling out over some teenage girl drama and Stacey became just another face in the crowd between classes. Although whenever I would see her walking by and she saw me we did share a smile between ourselves from time to time.

And that folks was the story of my first real kiss with a girl. It would also unfortunately be the last time I would swap spit with a girl before the summer I turned 17 and lost my V-Card to a 20 year old young woman -- but that's a whole different story entirely.

So what was your first French kiss like? Do you have an interesting story about it? Please feel free to share in the comments below.

* Months ago before I published this article, I sent a copy to "Stacey" to proofread as I promised her I would. She thought my description there was absolutely hilarious. God bless her!

The Ludicrous Speed We Travel Through Our Universe

Being an amateur stargazer, I have to confess that very few sights on this planet can inspire more amazement and awe from me than the sight of the evening sky after sunset when twilight begins to deepen into night and the very first of our world's nearest heavenly neighbors begin to appear in our sky above.

Going outside at night and watching the moon rise, the planets of our Solar System appear, and thousands of visible stars and galaxies appear overhead in the night sky never ceases to amaze us stargazers.

Even the brightest star known to us, our own bright Sun that we see practically every clear, mostly cloudless daytime from sunrise to sunset, is a wonderful miracle in the heavens that most people seemingly take for granted because its a constant companion.

From our perspective standing here on our good Earth, everything in the heavens appears to be fixed -- aside from our lovely moon and the five visible "wanderers" that we can see with the naked eye.

However, outside of our visual range, our planet travels at an incredible speed of rotation every single day, and in orbit around the Sun. The planets of the solar system also cover distances that might seem surprisingly fast to most of us observing them. Our own bright Sun also travels at insanely fast speeds around our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The reason we don't readily notice this is because the space beyond our planet is so very vast, its nearly incomprehensible to imagine. The distances involved are so long that we cannot possibly measure them simply by miles.

Today, I'm going to tell y'all just how fast and how far we travel. Y'all better buckle up because this is gonna blow your minds.


The Sun, Earth, & The Moon

At the center of our solar system is our own beautiful Sun and this is where our journey begins.

Our Sun is a bright G-type main-sequence star (or G-Type Star) that comprises about 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. The Sun itself rotates at an average of about 28 days, although this varies at different latitudes since the Sun isn't a solid body but rather a giant ball of gaseous plasma. Its width is measured at approximately 864,000 miles, or 109 times that of Earth, with its mass measured at about 330,000 times that of the Earth.

To give you an idea of how huge that actually is, let me explain to y'all the exact speed and distance it takes our Earth to travel in its orbit around the Sun in a single year.

Our planet Earth is the third planet out from the Sun and the fifth largest planet in our Solar System. The mean diameter of the Earth (the distance from one side to the other through Earth's center) is about 7,926 miles across. However, the interesting thing to realize here is that Earth is not quite a total sphere.

Our planet bulges out a bit more around the equator than it does at the poles because of its rotation caused by the flattening at the poles, making it a slight oblate spheroid. Earth is therefore slightly smaller when measured between the North and South Poles (or the meridional circumference), which gives a diameter of 7,907 miles -- or a difference of about 20 miles. Earth's circumference (the distance all the way around the equator) is around 24,900 miles.

Earth itself rotates on its axis in space counter-clockwise approximately once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds in a standard 24 hour day; spinning at an incredible speed of about 1,037 miles and hour. Because Earth spins steadily, as well as moves at a constant rate in orbit around the sun, we have the gravity that holds us all tightly in its grip to this beautiful blue world we all know and love.

The mean distance from the surface of the Sun to the surface of the Earth is around 93 million miles. This distance is measured by astronomers as one astronomical unit (AU).

Since the Earth revolves in an oval shaped path (or elliptical orbit) around the Sun, rather than an even circular path, the exact distance varies ranging between the extremes of perihelion (closest approach) in January and aphelion (most distant orbital position) in July. This actually puts Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun from between approximately 91.5 million to 94 million miles respectively.

Earth travels about 1.6 million miles daily at about 68,000 miles per hour in its orbit around the sun. Over the span of the 365.26 days that makes up a single year, our planet Earth travels around 584 million miles in its orbit around the Sun.

That's pretty incredible huh?

Next to us in the night sky is our own beautiful lunar companion, Luna -- better known as simply the Moon.

The Moon's mean radius is 1,079.6 miles wide with an overall diameter of 2,159 miles, or about a little less than one-third the width of the Earth. Because of tidal forces that keep the Moon from rotating, one side always faces the Earth as it circles us in its monthly rotation.

Like the Earth travels around the sun in an oval-shaped path, the Moon also travels in an oblong orbit. When the Moon is the farthest away from Earth (or at its Apogee), it’s 252,088 miles away, while at it's closest approach (or at its Perigee), the Moon is 225,623 miles away -- the equivalent of about 32 Earths distant.

The Moon makes a complete orbit around the earth every 27.3 days, or approximately 13 times in a calendar year. Given the distance from the Earth and speed, the Moon travels a full distance of 1,423,000 miles an hour at a speed of 2,288 miles per hour to complete this orbit. Because of the rotation of the Earth and our own perspective standing on the surface, we humans do not perceive just how fast this is from our observations -- but its pretty fast!

The sunlight we see here on Earth takes approximately
8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel the 93 million miles
from the surface of the Sun through the gulf of space to reach Earth.

The Speed Of Light 

Our Solar System is so large in sheer scale that using ordinary units of measurement like feet, or miles, simply won't do. On average, Pluto -- the farthest planet in our solar system (and yes, it's still a planet even if its a small one!) has a mind-blowing average mean distance of 3.6 billion miles from the Sun and takes a whopping 247.9 years to orbit the Sun just once!

In order to measure the size of our Solar System more accurately we must use the speed of light as our yard stick.

We use this because the speed of light is constant throughout the universe, traveling in the vacuum of space at an incredible speed of about 186,282 miles per second -- or about 670.6 million miles per hour. To put that in perspective, if you could physically travel at the speed of light, you could go around the Earth a mind-blowing 7.5 times in one second; or travel from Earth to the Moon in about 1.5 seconds.

Now that's ludicrous speed folks, and theoretically nothing can move faster than light outside of science fiction.

One light-minute is about 11,160,000 miles. One light-hour is 671 million miles -- roughly the distance between the sun and halfway between the planets Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. One light-day is 16.1 billion miles -- more than four times the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Finally, one light-year is a whopping 5.8 trillion miles!

Standing on the surface of the Earth, when we look up at the bright yellow Sun in the sky and the light that makes up the daytime hours; that light we see takes approximately 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel the 93 million miles from the surface of the Sun through the gulf of space to reach Earth. So, one AU is a bit more than 8 light-minutes in distance.

From the 3.6 billion miles from Sun to Pluto at the far end of the Solar System, it would take sunlight about 5 hours and 40 minutes to cover that distance, or roughly about 39.5 AU.

Now when measuring distances outside of our Solar System, we must turn to another unit of measuring distances called parsecs. A parsec is approximately equal to 3.26 light-years, or 19.2 trillion miles (206,000 AU). A distance of 1,000 parsecs (or 3,262 light years) is called a kiloparsec (KPC).

Beyond our Solar System the nearest stars are in the Alpha Centauri system, a triple star system made up of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus (Centauri A), Toliman (Centauri B), and the small, red dwarf star Proxima Centauri (Centauri C). The closest of these stars, Proxima Centauri, sits at about 4.24 light-years (or 1.30 parsecs) from the Sun.

To put another way, the light from our stellar next door neighbors that we would see standing her on Earth took just over four years to reach us. Also, if we tried to measure that in standard miles, that would be roughly 24,000,000,000,000 miles away! Now that's a lot of zeroes, y'all.


The Milky Way And Beyond

Our entire Solar System -- our Sun with its family of planets, asteroids, and comets -- orbits around the center of the large Milky Way Galaxy.

The Milky Way itself is a large barred spiral galaxy believed to be about 100,000 light years across (30.66 kiloparsecs) and made up of an estimated 100 - 400 billion stars, nebulae, and exoplanets.

The Solar System itself does not lie near the center of our Galaxy, rather it lies about 29,000 lights years (or 8 kiloparsecs) from the Galactic Center on what is known as the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way.

Our Sun and Solar System move in a huge orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy at about about 500,000 miles an hour. That's roughly about 12,500 miles in 90 seconds. Because the Milky Way is such a big place, even at this ludicrous speed, it takes our Sun and Solar System approximately 225-250 million years to complete one single orbit around the galaxy’s center. To put that in perspective, that's roughly Earth's early-to-mid Triassic Period when the first dinosaurs appeared till the present day! This amount of time is referred to as a cosmic year, or a galactic year.

The Milky Way itself travels through the Universe at large at an astonishing 1.3 million miles an hour!

Outside of our galaxy the nearest local bodies are the two Magellanic Clouds that orbit the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is approximately 163,000 light-years (49.9 kiloparsecs) away while the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is approximately 206,000 light-years (63 kiloparsecs) away.   

Beyond the Magellican Clouds the closest neighboring galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31, or NGC 224). Like the Milky Way, it is also a barred spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light years (770 kiloparsecs) from our Sun. The Andromeda Galaxy has an estimated diameter of about 220,000 light years (67 kiloparsecs).

On and interesting note, due to the ever expanding nature of the Universe, the Andromeda Galaxy is currently racing toward our own Milky Way Galaxy at an estimated speed of about 70 miles per second and the two galaxies are expected to collide with each other sometime in about 4-5 billion years from now.

Once we move further out into the Universe itself, the distances become even more daunting. Astronomers typically express the distances between neighboring galaxies and galactic clusters in megaparsecs (MPC) and gigaparsecs (GPC) the largest units of length commonly used. A megaparsec is one million parsecs (or 3,260,000 light-years) and a gigiparsec is one billion parsecs (or 3.26 billion light-years)!

The most distant and probably oldest known galaxy in the observable Universe is GN-z11 approximately 32 billion light-years (or 9.75 gigaparsecs) away from the Milky Way in a Universe that is estimated to be 93 billion light-years (or 28 gigaparsecs) across!

Now that's truly incredible to think about, y'all!


Conclusion

Going about our daily lives we can easily take for granted that we are traveling through this galaxy and universe of ours, propelled at incredibly ludicrous speeds.

Looking up at the night sky, seeing the heavens above us in the sky dome, its truly a humbling experience knowing that in all of that infinity we are all of us merely a small speck of sand in an insanely large ocean of stars and galaxies -- and perhaps far more than we can readily observe even with our best astronomical instruments.

Probably the only thing more infinite than our known Universe is the human imagination itself.

I hope y'all have enjoyed this post, have a wonderful Dixie evening and y'all come back now, ya hear!

This blogger would like to offer a special thanks to the wonderful folks at earthsky.org and NASA for providing the information in this article.

Southern Fried Nostalgia & Fandom: Hey Arnold! Episode Review -- The Haunted Train (1996)

For what was allegedly written to be a so-called "kids show" Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold! had some surprisingly dark and (dare I say it?) spooky as hell episodes.


Haunted Train (Season 1, Episode 8-b) written by Josie Nericcio and directed by Tuck Tucker & Juli Murphy-Hashiguchi was the earliest introduction into a list of several suspense-themed episodes written throughout the series. The episode premiered on Wednesday, November 6, 1996 along with the episode The List (Season 1, Episode 8-a). Run time about 12 minutes.

The story begins with a menacing glimpse of the haunted train emitting smoke over the title card for the episode and the shot dissolving to a boring autumn day for Arnold and Gerald as they sit on the stoop in front of the Sunset Arms Boarding House just chilling out and eating ice cream. When they complain to Arnold's grandfather, Phil, about being bored, a passing train on the nearby elevated railroad line inspires the old man to tell the boys of the time he worked for the railroad, and first heard the Legend of the Haunted Train.

These boys could do with a spoooooky story.

As Grandpa Phil sits down with the two boys and begins his scary recounting of the events, his telling of the story would steadily gain a small audience of Arnold and Gerald's classmates and neighbor kids. Thus ending everyone's boredom.

According the Grandpa Phil, the story began 40 years before with old Train Engine #25 and a train conductor who went insane and drove his train off the railroad tracks to oblivion, never to be seen again. Legend has it he drove the drain (as Phil puts it) "All the way downtown....to the very-most southern point!" And he didn't mean to the South Pole neither. 

Phil then explains that, as the legend goes, every year on the anniversary of the disappearance old Engine #25 reappears at the old train station with the crazy engineer's terrible ghost at the controls to pick up unsuspecting passengers that are drawn aboard the passenger car by a blinding, hypnotic white light -- sorta like a moth to a flame, or some extraterrestrial beacon. Then the victims are overpowered by the terrible rotten egg smell of "fire and brimstone" and terrorized by a ghastly, inhuman-sounding music.

After this the train then enters the dreaded "zone of darkness" and finally arriving at their final destination: the fiery underworld. Its there that the door to the passenger car opens up and the doomed passengers are greeted by the "Red Hot Demon himself!"

Okay, maybe not quite the "red hot demon" Phil mentioned,
but y'all get the idea.

After recounting this spooky and certainly not safe for nine-year-olds story, Phil leaves them with one final bit of important information: that tonight would be the 40th anniversary of Engine #25's disappearance and implied that he'd hate to be at the old train station tonight. He even gives out directions before leaving the curious and impressionable kids to their thoughts and overactive imaginations.

In the next scene Arnold and Gerald are discussing if the story Phil told them was true with Helga nearby skipping rope. Arnold says his grandpa is known for making stuff up. Helga plays the part of the skeptic and doesn’t believe the story at all, saying she wants physical evidence.

Oh just kiss you two, y'all know ya wanna!

Arnold says that some things can’t be proved that way, and maybe the best way to determine if the story’s true is to visit the old train station themselves that very night. Gerald's not really that big on the idea, proving he has at least some faith in the validity of the story. Helga continues to express doubt, but then Arnold tells her she doesn’t have to come, and he’d understand if she's too scared....goading her into agreeing to join them.

Later that night, the trio arrive at the old train station. It's all dirty and boarded up, not to mention full of cobwebs -- one of which Helga steps right into! Yikes! Gerald throws a small rock into the train tunnel and a cloud of bats flies right at them.

So far, those are the only creepy things that happen to them as they wait and wait into the night for something to confirm Grandpa Phil's story.

The kids get bored waiting, so Arnold plays his harmonica while Gerald sings about the psychotic engineer and Helga just stands there with her arms folded growing more and more annoyed as the clock (which is still running despite the fact the station is boarded up and seemingly abandoned) strikes midnight.

The short song is called "Haunted Train Blues" on the official Hey Arnold! music soundtrack and its set to the beat of David Bowie's 1972 song "The Jean Genie" (which Arnold preforms very well on the harmonica). The song itself goes like this:

They say he lost his mind,
Went crazy on that day,
Ran his train right off the tracks,
And drove it straight to....HEY! 

Where's the engineer?
Been waitin' all night long,
Better show up soon,
Or I'mma hafta say so long.

A-woo-wooooooo!
Been waitin' on the haunted train.

Sing it again, Gerald.

Helga, who is completely fed up and annoyed by the situation and the two boys respectively, declares that there's no ghost train and no crazy engineer and that she's ready to check out.

Just then the sound of a train whistle can be heard, then the station began to rumble as a bright light appears from the train tunnel. A large black train with blood-red trim and the number 25 on the front of the locomotive appears before them. When the doors of the passenger car open, the kids see bright light and enter. When they realize the situation, they try to get back out but the doors close on them and the train quickly pulls out of the station.

Then Helga catches the smell of rotten eggs and an inhuman music plays as well. Helga screams, freaks out and tries to exit the train again. When the doors open the kids see bright light and enter. When they realize the situation, they try to get back out but the doors close and the train pulls out of the station.

A moment later the kids all catch the smell of rotten eggs and then the creepy, inhuman-sounding music begins to play as well. Helga screams, completely freaking out and tries to exit the train again, cursing her own inquisitive nature and stating that she completely believes the story now.

As the train continues down the bumpy tracks, the lights inside the car begin to flicker until they eventually go out completely. They are convinced that they've entered the "zone of darkness" and the next stop is the fiery underworld.

Helga mentions she can feel "the flames of the dark underworld" breathing down the back of her neck. She turns to see a figure hovering over her and wheezing eerily. Helga screams again as Arnold and Gerald run over to help her. Just then the lights in the car turn back on and their classmate, Brainy, is standing there before them. When they ask why he's there, Brainy replies with a wheezy, "Uh... I don't know." Gerald then opens the door as a super-annoyed Helga tosses Brainy out of the train head first into a muddy lake.
 

Question: why didn't they jump off with him? Humm....anyhow moving on.

After ditching Helga's stalker, the lights again flicker and the three kids see the "fires of the underworld" and shadowy figures walking among the flames as the train comes to another stop. Arnold sees a nearby fire hose in the compartment and gets an idea. The kids retrieve the fire hose and point it at the door just as the "red hot demon" opens it. Arnold aims right for the demon -- who turns out to be a now slightly angry and soaking wet steel mill worker.

Then the decidedly not ghostly -- nor undead -- train engineer appears and tells the three kids they are at the local steel mill and only relief workers are allowed on the train.

When the kids ask about the train being haunted the engineer mutters "Oh no, not that story again" -- implying that this particular urban legend has caused him more than one headache over the years.

The train engineer goes on to explain everything they experienced. The rotten egg smell is the sulfur, typical in a steel mill. He also explains that the lights in the train are always flickering and going out, likely due to faulty wiring in the old railroad car. And finally, the "inhuman music" they heard was the polka which the bored engineer had been playing on his accordion.

Now having cleared up the whole story and explained all of the alleged supernatural phenomenon, the engineer takes the three kids (and presumably the now off-duty second shift team from the steel mill) back to the city. No ghosts, no haunted train, no trip to the fiery underworld....just the overactive imaginations of three 4th graders.

In the next scene, Grandpa Phil is driving the kids home in his Packard, having picked the three up from the train station. After retelling their story, Phil complements Arnold on his plan to take on the fires of the underworld with a fire hose. Arnold smiles and suggests that his grandpa set them up, to which Phil just smiles and says, "Well, at least you weren't bored."

So, there was no mad engineer, or haunted train, right?

Well, this leads us, the viewers, into the final scene of the episode where Brainy sits on a wooden fence next to the railroad tracks, smiling and wheezing (as always) as a similar train with an engine labeled #25 passes by, and a ghostly, transparent figure playing an accordion sings another (and slightly eerie) ghostly song about the haunted train and mad engineer into the episode's end credits -- my complements to series music writer and composer, Jim Lang.


My Thoughts

This was the first episode of the series that had an element of mystery and supernatural terror to it, though certainly not the last one.

I was already close to being a legal adult at age 20 when the episode first aired, and while I cannot say that the episode actually spooked me out in any way -- unlike the creepy-ass pirate ghosts from Garfield's Halloween Adventure (1985) which I saw for the first time at age 9 and actually gave me a couple of serious nightmares! -- the episode did feel like the sort of good time children's adventure story I would have enjoyed as a younger boy.

Even now the episode never fails to make me smile a little. Its one of those episodes of the Hey Arnold! series that I enjoy watching around the Halloween season, along with other classic spooky episodes of cartoon and animated series specials right up there with It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and other spooky themed episodes of classic animated series shows that I view every late October in a yearly tradition.

Be sure to check out the episode and let me know what y'all think about this blog post in the comments below.

Night Sky Photography -- 10-12-2022 -- Uranus Near Occultation Of Luna

Good morning, fellow stargazers!

Well folks, last night I was concerned about the mostly cloudy skies that we'd had down here in my corner of South Carolina all day, and being unable to capture a decent photo of the near occultation of the distant planet Uranus with our lovely Luna in the late night sky.

An occultation occurs when a Solar System body passes in front of a more distant night sky object (such as a star or another solar system body), partially or totally hiding the more distant object and momentarily blocking its light. Occultations can be seen only at the right time and from a limited part of the Earth.

Unfortunately, Uranus would not actually pass behind the Moon from my little corner of Dixie, or the eastern part of the United States. However, the occultation was easily visible in most parts of the western U.S. and most of western and central Canada in the Northern Hemisphere. Here it passed just below Luna closely just beneath the glow of the Moon.

I captured the distant planet Uranus just beneath the bottom of the Moon with my trusty Sony DSC-H200 digital camera at maximum zoom on a 35X Optical Zoom lens using the Manual Exposure setting to capture Uranus and the surface features of the now Waning Gibbous Moon. You can see the small, barely visible dot labeled in the photo, as well as the outstanding features of the lunar surface.

The result was an absolutely beautiful shot of the distant giant planet just below the lovely face of the Man On The Moon.

Don't let the apparent small size of Uranus as seen from here on the surface of the Earth fool y'all. With a average radius of 15,760 miles (or 25,362 kilometers), Uranus is about 4 times wider than our Earth and the third largest planet in our Solar System after Jupiter and Saturn.

In addition, being the seventh planet in the Solar System, Uranus has an average distance of 1.8 billion miles (or 2.9 billion kilometers), Uranus is about 19 astronomical units (AUs) away from the Sun compared to our planet's own 93 million miles. 

At present the moon is approximately 238,855 miles from the Earth and Uranus is about 1.74 billion miles from the Earth.

Graphic showing the size comparison between the Earth, our Moon
and the planet Uranus.

Its possible to spot Uranus with the naked eye on Earth, though it would appear as a very dim dot that would be very easily missed unless you knew exactly where to look for it. The best bet for an amateur astronomer is the use of a telescope, a pair of binoculars, or a really good camera lens.

Well once again I hope y'all enjoyed my photo, this one was a pure joy to capture and I am thankful for the break in the mostly cloudy sky to get the shot perfectly.

Have a wonderful evening and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!

Night Sky Photography -- 10-09-2022 -- The Full Hunter's Moon & Jupiter

Good evening fellow Stargazers!

Tonight with beautifully clear skies overhead, I was able to capture a really lovely shot of the first Full Moon of autumn 2022 in the eastern sky with Jupiter, the largest planet on our Solar System, shinning brightly nearby.

The Full Moon in October 2022 is the Full Hunters Moon this year. Sometimes, every few years or so, the Harvest Moon is the Full Moon of October. The Harvest Moon is actually the closest Full Moon to the autumn equinox every year and can occur before and after the equinox. Since the Full Moon occurred before September 21st this year, the Hunters Moon is the name of this month's Full Moon.