SUCK FACE BLOW - Television Astronaut

The Coquetries Of

SUCK FACE

BLOW

TELEVISION ASTRONAUT!

A Short Fiction Series

That Is Supposed To Suck!

By

David A. Archer

02/15/1968

11/09/2006

There was really no contest. I was easily the best television astronaut that ever lived!

I had plenty of practice when I was a kid. It started out with small channel changing exercises that my dad would over see between beers. It was my job to sneak up on the television (so as to practice space sneaking), and then change the channel to the scheduled programming that my father and I went over no less than twice per week.

I was in training and there was no confusing the matter!

Pretty soon, I was changing the channels before my father even began to think about activating the channel switching signal from the Captains chair. It was almost like I was part of the ship before long.

When the old man wasn't around, I most times found myself practicing other routines... just to maybe get an early promotion for showing above and beyond the call of duty kind of astronaut stuff. My ol' man was good like that. He knew talent and he rewarded good performance!

That is a true sign of a good Captain.

As I grew older, into my pre-teen years, he found it was time to "graduate me" some to actual astronaut programs. Nothing of the silly training camp sort of program, but the real deal on T.V. kind. I could say the entire dialogue between Earth and the Moon Shot in under three viewings consecutively.

I was definitely going places.

About the same time period as getting some real experience with television shows about space, my old man thought it might be good to get some :outside practice" just to make sure my motor functions could operate in another atmosphere. He even built a small box like space capsule in the shrubs so I could get the feel for being in confined spaces for long periods of time.

I did still get breaks from training though... most of the time to get more beers. But I am sure that was just good use of scheduling skills on my dads part. He was good like that, too. Always an efficient leader.

It took me some years to realize that I only went into "outside training" when the first models of remote controlled television came out. It only had to do with us and my training because we invented it. More showed them how it was done with our everyday regimented training schedule. The old man made sure I knew that much in our secret "need to know" situation. He wanted to make sure I understood how serious the outside training box was to my career.

I knew it. I could sense it. I was on my way to being a true television astronaut.

It just couldn't be any other way... I was Suck Face Blow.