I Went To Mars Last Night

I Went To Mars Last Night
An excerpt, inspired by a true story, from The Adventures of Bing and Tron

I went to Mars last night. It wasn’t just a short trip there and back, we went all over, we spent more time on the journey than we did in the destination. We went to The Moon, Venus, Jupiter and even around the asteroid belt. Sadly, we didn’t make it all the way out to Pluto or Saturn. But still, I went to Mars last night.
“Tron, let’s walk home, pleeease.” Bing sometimes gets really passionate about things. This was one of those times, there was no arguing, and I had no excuses to argue. It was a warm, summer night, the grass was misty and dewy, and the crickets were louder than ever.
“Oh, Bing… Okay,” I gave in and submitted myself to her passions.
So we set off homeward bound. It didn’t take long for my slow, late evening pace to transform into a faster, happy, Bing-like jaunt. It was a beautiful night; the pavement was warm beneath our naked feet and soon the stars shone brightly. We came upon a large building, a church maybe. We walked over to a big pine tree and silently admired the grandeur. Ingrid’s eyes wandered away from the tree and over to the building. Without warning, a happy gasp sprang from Bing's mouth.
“Eeep! Oh my gosh.” With that she took off skipping through the empty parking lot toward the doors, which were letting out the luminescent orange light.
"Bing, what are you...?” I gave an exasperated sigh and walked toward the light. As I reached the edge of the light and as I searched it with my eyes, I could not find her. Just like that she skipped off into being lost.
“Tron! This is so cool.” Came her voice from nowhere.
“Bing?” Then I saw it. Right outside the door sat a huge cardboard box. I walked towards it and peered inside. I saw the ecstatic face of Bing looking up at me with big, happy, hopeful eyes.
“Tronnnn, can we keeeeep it!?” The happy eyes turned into pleading, begging eyes.
“Bing…” There was no way I was going to haul that huge box all the way home. “We can’t just take it. What if it belongs to someone?” Yeah right, the box was clearly being thrown away.
“Okay!” she shot from the box. “We’ll go ask if we can have it.” With that she reached for the door handle and opened the door.
The cool air from the cranked up air conditioning stung our sweaty bodies as we entered the building. I entered cautiously, but Bing strolled in, confident, and took off prancing down the large hallway. I followed. We came to a door with two important looking people inside. We continued passed the door to the water fountain to discuss our tactics. We re-hydrated ourselves and looked at each other for ideas on how to approach the important people. Our approach was plopped right into our laps. Right then the two people prepared to go their separate ways. They came to the doorway, and said their goodbyes. One of them left and the other turned his attention to us.
“Good evening girls, what can I do for you?” Important, and he seemed fairly nice; I could possibly deal with this.
I thought of what to say, when “Well, there’s this beautiful box outside, and it is out there all alone. We were wondering if we could take it in. We will give it a good home.” Bing knows how to reel in any fish, even the important ones.
With a chuckle from the man, and the pleading eyes from Bing, we got our box.
“You girls take the box, it’s been sitting there for days, take good care of it. And get home soon, it’s getting late.”
“Thank you, we will,” Bing said with a huge Ingrid smile plastered to her face and even more prance in her frolic.
“Thanks,” I said as I followed Bing down the hall and to the door.
We exited the building through the same door and found the box again. Bing stood by the box and started naming things we could use it for.
“We can bring it home, and put it in our backyard, and draw on it, and paint it a really cool color, and we’ll make it look really nice, and it can be our club house, yeah, a club house, I’ve always wanted a club house, I’ve always wanted to be in a club…”
“Bing, how are we going to get this home, it is huge.” It was huge. Think refrigerator box, now times that by like ten. I circled the box and analyzed the quandary I had on my hands.
“…And we can sleep in it, it’ll be kind of like a tree house, except without the wood, and without the heights, and without the tree. But a house, like a ground house, like a tree house, except on the ground…”
“Bing, we are no where near home, carrying this box will be almost impossible.” I didn’t like my cynicism, but someone has to think logically in this relationship.
“And… Oooo! Tron, we can drive the box, we can go where ever we want, Tron we can finally go to Mars!” She stopped talking, waiting for my response with enormous, eager eyes.
I might have looked at her like she was crazy, except for the fact that I’d known her for such a long time. I don’t know how long we’d officially been best friends, but it was a long time. I did not look at her like she was crazy; she was actually being fairly sane, comparatively speaking. I just smiled, chuckled and walked over and put my arm around her shoulder.
“Alright Bing, let’s go on a journey, show me how to drive a cardboard box.” We walked toward the box and prepared ourselves for the long journey.
I never knew you could drive a box, and I bet you didn’t know how to, or that it was even possible, either. First you have to find a friend, without a friend you can’t find a box. Second you have to find a box, because without a box, well, you don’t have a box. Then you have to tell yourself that you can drive a box, and after those three easy steps you are ready to drive your box.
We went all over. First we visited our planet, but had a lifetime to visit the Earth. So we set off into deeper and wider journeys. We left our atmosphere. Don’t ask me how we breathe out there; cause I don’t know, Ingrid forgot to mention that to me. Our first stop was the moon. We didn’t spend too much time there because a moon monkey chased us off his lawn. We made a few stops at Mercury, Jupiter, and in the asteroid belt. We spent quite sometime on Venus, where we found it was totally habitable for women, but all the men in life had kept the perfection a secret from the women. We thought of heading over to Saturn, Neptune and out to Pluto, but the path was long and dark and we didn’t know what kind of creepy space crawlers would be lurking. Se we went to Mars. Here we hung out for quite a while and even got out of the box, I mean space ship, to hang around.
That’s when mission control called. We had a problem with our box.
“But Mom, I really want to keep it, look how pretty it is.”
“Bingrid, you cannot keep this box on our lawn. And why do you have a box anyway? Bingrid, get in here, it is past midnight.” Our call with mission control was cut short with a slam.
“Tron, it’s late.” Bing looked defeated as she started to climb out of the box.
“Bing, we’re on mars, be careful, don’t let the alien life form suck your brains out!” I smiled as I pointed to the neighbor on the next lawn as he and his dog retreated to their home.
She turned and looked at me, now it was her turn to look at me like I was crazy.
“Bing, let me drive you home, in our box, we can stop at the moon on our way back.” She looked down at me, turned toward the front door of her home, and returned her gaze to me. The smile reappeared on her face as she sat back down in the box.
“Okay, but we gotta put it on warp speed, I’m late.”
“Brrkkk, T-mama to Bing-pop, clearance for lift off.”
“Brrkkk, Bing-pop to T-mana, all systems a go.”
We finished out flight home and said our see-ya-laters. I peered out of the box as I watched her skip back to her home, turn around right before entering, wave her hand high above her head and shout, “where are we going tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, where ever you want.” She bounced inside and let the door swing close. I sat back down in the box and tilted my head back until I was gazing at the stars.
I thought about Bing and how she is always getting me to do things like carry a box around my neighborhood, get chased by a dog and fly around my solar system in a box. I thought about our relationship and how we’d ever become friends in the first place. We are complete opposites. She is young, and I am old. She is jolly, and I think that jolly is a stupid word. She is willing to pull me away from reality by putting me in a box and I am willing to pull her back again by giving her a ride home in that box. She gets lost; I let myself get lost with her. She cries over stolen bobby pins, I whine about her over productive tear ducts. I thought about how much she needs me to keep her from getting left in the Antigua or Dallas airport. How she needs me to offer guiding support while we work on late Spanish homework, the work I finished weeks before. How she needs to call me late at night after I’ve already gone to bed and we don’t hang up for hours.
I also thought about how much I need her. How I need her to tell me to stop whining about everything. How much I need her to call me late at night, and wake me up, to tell me she’s bored and just thought to call me. I thought how I need her to get lost so as to cause excitement in my life. How I need her to pull me from my depressed attitude, tell me we are going to walk home, then make me spend the rest of the evening sitting in a box. But most of all I thought of how much I need her to need me. That’s why we make such good friends. Not because we are exactly the same and like all the same things, because that is surely not true. We are friends because she needs me and I need her. We need each other to pull the other up to Mars. We need each other to pull us back home to Earth. And mostly we just need each other to have someone to need.