really big, round thing.

Life seems so uncertain these days. Remember back when you were a kid and there were all these infallible truths? You know, like Tuesday is pizza for lunch day, your dad could beat up anybody else's dad, the sky is blue, the grass is green, there are nine planets in our solar system.

Then I stopped eating school lunches, and I met people with really big dads. Then people started questioning obvious things like colors, telling me that what looked blue or green to me could be orange or fuschia to someone else. And now, scientists tell me there are eight planets. We've kicked Pluto out of the club, and I'm all confused.

The scientist in me is glad. Pluto was always included in the list with an asterisk and a footnote that said that it was such a titchy little thing that a lot of people debated whether it should be labelled as a planet at all. So finally someone got up the guts to just call Pluto's bluff, "Hey, man, you're not even a real planet, and we'll prove it by redefining the word so that you don't meet the requirements - so there!" Of course, Pluto doesn't care, nor does Clyde Tombaugh, the guy who discovered the little guy back in 1930 and whose ashes are now making their way to the former planet on a spacecraft.

It also brings up the old Shakespearean point about roses and whether they would smell so good if they were named something else. Yes, of course they would. I don't know how Pluto smells, but none of this changes anything about the space body itself, just how we see it. Many infallible truths turn out to fall because of the words we use to describe them. There are no longer nine planets in our solar system because we changed planet from "big, round thing" to "really big, round thing." It's a finicky thing, language.

Honestly? The worst part about this whole fiasco is that it makes me feel very, very old. You know those people who say they remember when there were forty-eight states? You remember how old they always seemed, as if they had been there back at the beginning of time, taking notes to include in our history textbooks? Now, that's me. And it's even worse, because while it's generally accepted that political boundaries are changeable, you'd think you could rely on planets to be constant. I remember when I learned that My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas, and now I find out that she, while still very excellent, is serving nachos or noodles or gnocchi nuts. Someday, I just know that some punk kid is going to ask me how many planets there are, and I offhandedly will reply, "Nine, silly." And then those dumb kids will all laugh at Granny Sandra, who is only still alive to finish writing first-hand accounts of ancient historical events.

Kids these days.