Unmeteoric

The Leonid meteor shower occurred earlier this week. And I made the mistake of mentioning it to the kiddos. It was a mistake because a). I had no intention of waking them up at 3:30 a.m. to see it and b). there were only about 20 falling an hour, not really impressive, especially considering the bright, almost-full moon (for comparison, Mama and I had witnessed the spectacular meteor shower several years ago from a dark, wide beach, spotting more than 400 in less than an hour). But we did go out into the chill night air right before bed and searched the sky for falling stars. We saw lots of blinking planes and stars and the big moon but no meteors, much to their disappointment. And they were still talking about that disappointment the next morning when none of us had gotten up in the middle of the night and seen any. Perhaps I should've just said those blinking lights were falling stars!