Pageant Question 26: Tell me what I'm going to eat today. Begin with breakfast and end with dinner.

I recently saw a picture of what the people of the 1960s thought life would look like on Mars.  I laughed when Professor showed me because I thought he was pulling a joke.  It seemed extra funny because Professor never pulled jokes; he never laughed; he never broke his programming.  Professor was relentless in teaching me, and I was just as relentless in my quest to get him to break protocol and have fun.  I thought, irrational as it may seem, that he had finally busted loose.

"What is amusing you, Tetra?" he asked in his politely modulated voice.

"You're serious?  This is how people used to think they'd live on another planet?  Like this?"

"The photo-realistic drawing was created in 1961 by an unknown artist.  Space exploration was becoming very important in the 1960s for several reasons.  Can you tell me why?"

Professor turned every moment into a Teachable Moment, but I wasn't in the mood.  "Professor, you're saying that people in the 1960s predicted that there would be life on Mars, and that they would be living in these pods and growing all their food in hydroponic bays?  Like this picture shows?"

The program paused for a moment, and I knew he was searching the data banks for a more in-depth explanation, which is what he thought I wanted, but what I really wanted to know was how those people of the past predicted what life would be like on Earth, and why they didn't see it coming.

"Professor," I interrupted, "show me actual photographs of the outdoors, decade 1960."

He thought for another moment, and I could practically hear him deciding whether or not I was wasting time again or if I really wanted to see to enhance this Teachable Moment.  When I wanted to drift away and imagine, I would often ask Professor to show me photographs of the outdoors from the past.  He knew they fascinated me, but he had a schedule and he stuck to it.  I guess he decided that if I was interested, I'd be more likely to learn, so a great file of photos appeared that I could swipe through as he spoke.


Side Note:
If you are interested to know you would go about actually answering this pageant question (or any of them!) please send me a message or post a comment.  Pageant Question #26 is deceptively simple and most people's first instinct would result in a too-short and uninteresting answer.