Flashback

I had a flashback recently.

I remembered a story I had written for school when I was a kid. I must have been in 3rd or 4th grade. When you're that age your parents (hopefully) love all of your accomplishments and tell/show everyone about it. It was like that with this story. It was the talk of the town; every visitor and relative had to read my creation.

It was a pretty good idea for a story I came up with. A guy is riding on a space ship when it hits some piece of space debris and he is tossed out an access hatch. He is all alone in the empty blackness of space. No sound, no movement, the only thing he can see is a little piece of dust on the inside of his helmet. He realizes at that moment that he is like that speck of dust- an almost impossibly small human lost in the vast universe. He begins to think of his girlfriend he will leave behind. He was planning on asking her to marry him when he returned from his trip.

Now, of course, being a little kid, this story has to have a happy ending. He knows that his only hope to be saved is if the pilot, his long-time best friend and the most accomplished pilot he's ever seen, realizes that he is missing and performs a "perfect circle" with the space craft. If the pilot can circle the craft exactly, he will end up back at the collision point and be able to save the lost spaceman.

Anyway, the spaceman is found when the pilot circles back (the only pilot capable of performing such a precise maneuver) and sees him floating in space. The spaceman is saved, returns back to earth, and proposes to his girlfriend. When she is given the engagement ring, she exclaims, "It's beautiful. A perfect circle." And there was the name of the story: The Perfect Circle.

Looking back on this, I must have plagiarized this story somehow. I really find it difficult to believe I came up with this on my own. I read a lot when I was a kid and I probably read something that gave me this "perfect circle" idea. Well, if I did steal it, I got away with it then and haven't been busted yet!

So, why did I suddenly remember this story after 30 years?

I found a video about a guy named Alexander Overwijk who draws circles. Actually, he is the world freehand circle drawing champion. He draws a perfectly round, one-meter circle in less that a second. The video is taken in a classroom and provides a little bit of humor when he is loosening up in front of the kids.

And, of course, the video ends with him stating, "A perfect circle."