Beta Testing the Full Moon.

I remember when Beta was born. 

Not the fish (although we did have one for a brief interlude before it went belly up in protest). Beta as in the Paleolithic age of video recording. As in an expensive and heavy machine that my brother once stuffed a cookie into. As in a window into a world far away from the Arctic I grew up in and the source of much pain and suffering for the parental units that listened to endless re-runs of Annie, The Musical, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the electric buzz of light sabers.

Each month, a package would arrive from the south on “the Sched,” the moniker our little hamlet of 300+ had applied to the twice-weekly DC3 that connected us to the outside world with red Canada Post bags, supplies, seasonal interludes by the remotely-posted RCMP officer just starting out and standing on the bottom rung of the seniority ladder and a non-traditional flyby from St. Nick himself, despite the fact that the North Pole as just a ways down the frigid road.

Underneath the kraft paper and packing tape were four Beta tapes. Four trips into worlds of fantasy and imagination, the terrifying and the sublime. I imagined love against all odds as Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren embraced and never fully recovered from the thought that it might actually be possible that creatures of space could crawl into our ears and erupt from our bowels. The Goonies became friends and Wile E. Coyote died 1,000 spectacular ACME-branded deaths.

And then there were the hounds.

Damian’s devil dogs still have me crossing the street to avoid close contact with a Doberman Pinscher. But it was Sherlock’s dogged hunt across the moor to uncover the secret of the Hound of the Baskervilles that forever changed the full moon.

The hound in question was locked up in a dark and dank dungeon, covered in phosphorous paint to improve his terror ranking and let out once in a blue … er … full moon.

I would have howled, too.

On the silver screen it was terrifying and if I ever make it across the pond, I won’t be experiencing the moors after dark unless my companion has arms the size of missiles and the speed of a gazelle. 

But I’m on this side of the pond waiting for the other shoe to finally and eternally drop and wishing email would be un-invented. (21,918 emails later, I’m surprised my Gmail account hasn’t been impounded.) It’s been months since I’ve done anything of note or value for myself. The not-so-gentle “I didn’t tell you about it because I knew you would say you had to work” comments are uncomfortably valid and this morning I woke up on the toilet.

Technically I was half off the toilet. While the toilet paper holder does not provide effective support, it does a remarkable job doubling as an alarm clock.

Staring at the full moon as I drive back in the dark accompanied by two kids in jammies and an emergency purchase of Tide I can’t help but marvel at its luminosity.

And think of all the people I mentally told to kiss my milky white moon.