Riding Rockets

Do not repeat more than twice,the label warned. Yeah, right. With the title of astronaut on the line, the warning could have read,Do not repeat more than twice, death may result, and I would still have ignored it. I grabbed a third enema and then a fourth. The waste of my last purge was as clear as gin.

I walked from the proctologist like a first grader carrying a gold star on a homework assignment. He had commented several times he had never seen a colon so well prepared. That I didn’t shit for the next two weeks was a price I was willing to pay. (And, no, the civilian who had failed his prep wasn’t selected.)

Next up was the interview by a NASA psychiatrist. I wondered about this. I had never spoken to a psych in my life. Was there a pass-fail criterion? I considered myself mentally well balanced. (A strange self-assessment given I had just set a world record for holding an enema in a paranoid quest to secure a job.) But how did a psych measure mental stability? Would he be watching my body language? Would a twitch of my eye, a pulsating neck vein, or a bead of sweat mean something? Something bad? In desperation I searched my memory for whatThe Right Stuff had revealed about theMercury 7 astronaut psych evaluations. All I could recall was that they had been given a completely blank piece of paper to “interpret” and that one astronaut had answered, “It’s upside down.” Was such humor good? I didn’t have a clue. I was flying blind.

My first surprise, which added to my fear, was to find out there were to be two psych evaluations by different doctors, each about an hour long. I walked into my first meeting. The doctor rose from behind a desk and introduced himself, shaking hands with a very weak, moist grip. I hadn’t been in the room for fifteen seconds and already I was in a panic. Was the grip some type of test? If I echoed it in its limpness, was I indicating I had some latent sexual identity problems? I decided to be firm…not crushing, but firm. I watched his face but it was an enigma. I couldn’t read anything. I could have been shaking hands with Yoda. His voice was low; low enough I wondered if this was some sneaky hearing test. He motioned me to a chair. Thank God there was no couch. That novelty would have further rattled me.

He held a clipboard and pencil at the ready. I swallowed hard and waited for what I was certain would be a question like, “How many times a week do you masturbate?” But instead he ordered, “Please count backward from 100 by 7s as fast as you can.” I heard the click of a stopwatch and the gathering seconds…tick…tick…tick. My chances of becoming an astronaut were racing away with those seconds!

Only because of my plebe training at West Point, where I had learned to instantly obey any order, was I able to respond with lightning reflexes. If he wanted me to count backward by 7s from 100, then I’d do it. At least I didn’t have to answer the masturbation question. I began the litany, 100, 93, 86, 79, 72…, then I got off by a digit or two, tried to restart at my last known correct number, stumbled again, and ended in the 60s in a blurring babble of digits. I finally stopped and said, “I think I’m off track.” My comment was answered with theclick of the stopwatch. In the silence it sounded like a gunshot. It might as well have been, I thought. I was dead. At least my astronaut chances had been shot dead. I had failed what was obviously a mental agility test.

The psych said nothing. There was only a prolonged quiet in which all I heard was the scratching of pencil on paper. I had the cleanest colon in the world but my brain was constipated. It had FAILED me. I was certain that was the word being written by the psych. FAILED. Surely the other 199 candidates would breeze through this test. They would probably get to those final numbers…23…16…9…2…in a few blinks of the eye and then ask the psych if he wanted them to repeat the test doing square roots of the numbers. I was certain the man was thinking,Who let this guy in the door?

With nothing to lose, and in a desperate attempt to end the maddening silence, I quipped, “I’m pretty good at counting backward by ones.”

He didn’t laugh. “That won’t be necessary.” His icy tone confirmed it. I had failed.

After the 7s test, the doc once again positioned his pencil and asked, “If you died and could come back as anything, what would that be?”

More panic seized me. Where was this question leading? Into what minefield of the psyche would I now stumble? I was beginning to wish for the masturbation question.