No Dream Is Too High

• CHAPTER ELEVEN • LAUGH … A LOT!

Standing on E! Entertainment Television’s set for the final episode of Chelsea Lately, along with numerous celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Gwen Stefani, Gerard Butler, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Melissa McCarthy, Sandra Bullock, and a host of others who had gathered together to sing a song for Chelsea’s send-off, I was surrounded by Kathy Griffin, Joel McHale, and several others.

My Mission Control Director, Christina, said to me, “Buzz, these guys are comedians.”

“Oh, really?” I asked. I looked at the group of professional comics around me and said, “Let me explain to you the meaning of humor, and what real humor involves.”

The comedians gathered in closer, as if I were about to give them an insight they’d never heard before.

“You take a serious subject and you throw in an absurdity. And that’s humor,” I said.

The pros nodded appreciatively in agreement. Or at least I thought they were agreeing with me. Maybe they were merely humoring me.

To me, that’s the way good humor works—add some absurdity into a common subject and then continue on as though everything is normal, and find the funny elements within it. Good humor need not be crass, profane, or offensive. Anyone can attempt to be funny by emphasizing vulgar elements of life or by going for shock value. But creative humor finds the funny in everyday life.

NOBODY WOULD CONSIDER ME a comic, but even during Apollo 11, I attempted to find some levity in the midst of the tension.

For instance, we had no handle on the outside of the Eagle’s hatch, so as I was climbing out of the lunar module, with millions of people on Earth listening to Neil’s and my every breath, I couldn’t resist commenting. “Okay, now I want to back up and partially close the hatch,” I said, “making sure not to lock it on my way out.”

My statement was both factual and absurd at the same time, but I offered it without a chuckle, although my eyes were probably twinkling as brightly as the stars above me.

Already standing on the lunar surface, Neil Armstrong laughed out loud. “A particularly good thought,” he responded. We had discovered earlier that if the hatch was closed completely, the inside cabin pressure made it almost impossible to open, sealed by the external pressure on the Moon.

When Neil and I received word that we were good to take off from the lunar surface, I responded to our capsule communicator, Ron Evans, in Mission Control back in Houston, “Roger. Understand. We’re number one on the runway.”

My statement was comprised of two facts and two absurdities in the same sentence, so it was funny to me. It took the guys in Mission Control a few moments to catch my humor, and some never did!

LIFE IS SERIOUS, BUT don’t take yourself so seriously. Be willing to make light of yourself. And here’s a corollary to my theory of humor: Humor at the expense of others isn’t nearly as funny as making light of yourself. I take my work and my ideas very seriously, but I’m quick to laugh at myself, even making fun of some of my personal indiscretions and mistakes in life.

When I received an invitation to appear as myself on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, I was intrigued. After all, 30 Rock is an abbreviation for the building located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, which is now home to the NBC television network, but as I was growing up, it was home to Standard Oil of New Jersey, where my father worked as an aviation fuel manager. So when I was asked to join Tina Fey and the cast of 30 Rock, I jumped at the chance.

In the episode, Liz Lemon (Tina’s character) laments that she will never find a man like her mother’s great love, Eddie. We actually satirized some of the negative details from my own life experiences to help Liz realize that the ideal astronaut does not exist. Ironically, I was telling her the truth! These were some of my failures and low points; they were not my best qualities. But I was glad we could laugh about them—in the fictional scene as well as in real life.

The way the story was set up, Liz’s mother had been telling her stories for years about her ideal man: Eddie the Astronaut. Meanwhile, Liz had been holding out for her ideal man, Mike Dexter. But then she meets me and realizes the truth.

Liz enters a glass-surrounded penthouse room and finds me looking out the windows at New York. “Excuse me, Doctor Aldrin,” she says. “I’m sorry, there wasn’t a door, so I just …”

“I don’t believe in barriers, because I always break them. You must be Liz!”

“Yes, sir.” Liz crosses the room and faces me. “I actually came about my mother, Margaret Lemon. You would have known her as Margaret Freeman?”

“Maggie Freeman. Of course, I remember her.”

“Well, I’m sorry to bother you, but I can’t help but wonder what my mom lost by giving up on you, her perfect man.”

“Perfect? Sure, I’m a famous astronaut, decorated fighter pilot, doctorate through MIT, but even I sometimes …” Distracted, I break off in mid-sentence, go to the windows, and address the Moon in the sky. “I see you! I see what you’re doing. Return to the night! You’ve no business here.”

“Are you yelling at the Moon?” Liz asks.

“I’m sorry … she and I just … I get mad sometimes.”

“Sure …”

“Look, do you want to know what your mother missed? Years of drinking, depression, cheating. I flipped over a Saab in the San Fernando Valley. I once woke up in the Air and Space Museum with a revolver in the waistband of my jean shorts!”

“Oh, my god, but you were a …”

“A human being,” I interrupt Liz, “but I’m at peace now, sober almost 32 years. But I would have put Maggie Freeman through hell.”

Liz sighs in frustration.

“There’s no such thing as astronaut Mike Dexter. What am I doing?”

“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” I say to Liz. “Would you like to yell at the Moon with Buzz Aldrin?”

“Yes! Please.”

Liz and I go to the large windows facing the cityscape and raise our faces toward the Moon, even though it’s broad daylight.

“I own you!” I yell at the Moon.

“You dumb Moon!” Liz agrees, shaking her fist at the Moon.

“I walked on your face!”

“Don’t you know it’s day? Idiot!” Liz adds.

I loved working with Tina Fey. She is bright, talented, and so much fun. And she is cute, too. When Tina was asked to contribute a photo for a book about New York, choosing something that was iconically New York, she included a photo of the two of us on the set of 30 Rock. It was definitely one of my favorite sitcoms on which I appeared.

I ALWAYS ENJOY spoofing myself. I made a cameo appearance on the CBS television hit The Big Bang Theory, a show that finds humor in the lives of a group of astrophysicists, engineers, and physicists. In the episode, Raj wants to pop Howard’s balloon a bit and bring him back to Earth, since he has become obnoxiously boastful about traveling into space as an astronaut. Besides wearing a NASA shirt every day and passing out eight-by-ten glossies of himself in uniform, Howard has developed an annoying habit of turning every conversation toward space. I cannot imagine why they wanted me in this segment!

Howard’s wife, Bernadette, confronts him about his bloviating, but rather than accepting the critique graciously, Howard becomes defensive, disappointed that his wife and friends are dumping on his great achievements. Raj sends a video link to Howard, ostensibly featuring me passing out trick-or-treat candy to kids coming to my door. The role had me boasting about my accomplishments as an astronaut every time I handed out a piece of Halloween candy, somehow connecting each treat to my experiences in space.

I hand the first little boy a Milky Way candy bar as I explain, “There you go; it’s a Milky Way. The Milky Way is a galaxy in space.” I point at my chest and say, “I’ve been in space.”

To a little girl, I say, “It’s a Mars bar,” as I give her the candy. “I’m an astronaut.”

When the third child approaches, a slightly older boy dressed as a fireman, I hand him a MoonPie and say, “This one’s a MoonPie! I’ve walked on the Moon.” I hold my hands out as though begging for an answer and ask, “What have you done with your life?”

After the third over-the-top trick-or-treat exchange, Howard sheepishly turns to Bernadette and admits, “Okay, I get it.”

E! Entertainment Television declared my cameo as “one of the funniest, yet shortest, guest spots in BBT history.”

My role on the show wasn’t completely accurate. Contrary to bragging about landing on the Moon, I’ve always been quite conscious of the fact that I was simply the right guy in the right place at the right time. I’ve always felt fortunate to have had the tremendous opportunity afforded me—lucky to have been born an American, lucky to have been selected as an astronaut, and lucky to have been part of the initial crew to land on another celestial body. Of course, the humorous point was not lost on me that I can easily become too verbose when talking about space. Howard, I get it, too!

EVEN WHEN I’M NOT on television, I occasionally come up with a zinger. For instance, one time Christina and I had just landed at the airport, coming home from Germany, when a reporter from TMZ asked me, “What did you think of that Felix Baumgartner leaping off the Red Bull hot-air balloon today?”

It was quite an impressive feat, as Baumgartner jumped from 24 miles high, an altitude of more than 100,000 feet, and reached airspeeds as high as 500 miles an hour, whisking downward, wearing only a space suit and helmet for protection and relying on a parachute to slow his fall once he reached 10,000 feet. Responding instinctively, I said, “That was one giant leap for Red Bull.” To me, that was a zinger, taking a serious subject and throwing in an absurdity.

Sometimes you just have to roll with it.

During a 2015 congressional hearing on America’s future in space, chaired by Texas senator Ted Cruz, I was giving a presentation, waxing quite eloquently on the potential of exploration, when I was interrupted by a cell phone ringing. I reached into my pocket and realized that the ringing cell phone was mine! I pulled out the phone and said, “Sorry,” as I turned off the phone.

Senator Cruz had a quick response. “Please tell us that is not a call from the space station.” We all had a laugh at my expense, and I carried on with my presentation. I’m usually a pretty good sport, even going on Sesame Street once to explain that the Moon is not made of cookie dough, so appearing at a Senate subcommittee hearing was a piece of cake!

How you respond to what life throws at you often makes all the difference. Smile. Laugh. Don’t take yourself so seriously. When you change, everything else around you changes.

Everywhere I travel, people tell me stories of where they were that day in 1969 when Neil and I walked on the Moon. They tell me about the incredible celebrations and parties in which they participated in honor of Apollo 11, and I get envious. I would have loved to have attended some of those parties, but Neil, Mike, and I were out of town!

Hey, that’s pretty funny!

And you thought astronauts were dull!