The blanket’s spread out in the backyard, the way it is every August, and Joon’s been staring up so long his neck’s starting to ache when it happens, a streak of light, gone almost before it registers.
“MOM. Did you see that?! A shooting star!”
His mom’s still looking up too. “I saw it. Quick, make a wish.”
“Wait, why do we do that? Wish on it, I mean.”
She thinks about it for a second. “Honestly? Nobody really knows where that tradition started. Old, though. Really old.”
“But what IS it? Like, actually?”
“Not a star, that’s for sure. Just a tiny bit of space rock, sometimes not even bigger than a grain of sand, slamming into our atmosphere so fast it burns up completely before it ever gets close to the ground.”
“A grain of SAND did that?”
“Moving fast enough, yeah. We’re talking something like 60 kilometers a second. That’s fast enough to turn basically nothing into a flash bright enough for you to catch out of the corner of your eye.”
Joon goes quiet, thinking about that. “So it’s already gone. Like, it doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Pretty much. Burned up completely, way up in the sky, probably before it even finished falling.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
“Maybe. Or maybe that’s exactly why people started wishing on them, something that bright, that fast, gone before you can even be sure you really saw it. Feels like it deserves a wish, doesn’t it? Before it’s gone for good.”
Joon looks back up at the sky, quiet again, clearly making his wish. His mom doesn’t ask what it was. Some things, she figures, work better left unsaid, same as the star that granted it. ⭐💫
Now It’s Your Turn
Find someone to lie on a blanket with and see what you both remember.
- Is a shooting star actually a star?
- About how fast does it travel through the sky?
- Why do people traditionally wish on them?
(Whenever you’re ready: 1. No, it’s a tiny piece of space rock or dust burning up. 2. Around 60 km per second. 3. Nobody knows for sure, it’s just an old tradition.)
Maybe tonight, find your own patch of sky, and see what streaks by. ⭐✨
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