Multiverse, Milky Way And Some Stars Collapsing

 

     There are two things that are certain in this world: growing old and dying. Most men in my family (grandfathers, my father, uncles, cousins, etc.) don’t get to be septuagenarian; they die in their fifties and sixties, some even younger. And I don’t mind. In this world that gets harsher every year, you’d be lucky to live in your fifties—until my younger sister started sharing to us anecdotes about her precocious five year old son who is in kindergarten. The little guy took nursery school with ease and ended up with the highest honor. They would sit down to dinner and his son would regale them with information about multiverse, galaxies, solar systems, the size of the moon and the planets, how tall some famous mountains are and how numbers don’t stop in the billions. No, they don’t teach these things in kindergarten; her son would search and read them on Internet. And my sister also told us how she had noticed her son getting bored with his online classes and with his teacher’s lectures. But then, we don’t see how lectures about simple additions, subtractions and other kindergarten lessons would interest the little guy when he’s busy thinking about some stars that are collapsing and turning into black holes.

     Now, I want to live a little longer, just to see how this boy would fare in life. Would his thirst for knowledge fade as he grows up? Or would it increase? I want to see him in his thirties and older, see what kind of man and person he would become. Maybe, he’d become a scientist who would change the world for the better. Or maybe he’d grow up a bum, one who couldn’t even change the channel on his TV because he’s too lazy to look for the remote.

     I was, I think, already in college when I learned that our galaxy’s name is Milky Way.