Teacher in Outer Space!

Today my class was doing a reading comprehension activity about the first dog and chimpanzee to go into outer space. Space travel is a topic that always seems to interest students of that age so we ended up having quite a discussion about shuttle missions etc. Somehow the topic came up of civilians going into outer space. I told the class that the first civilian chosen that was supposed to go into space was a teacher. I explained how thousands of teachers wrote essays which were then judged and Christa McCauliffe won the contest. I shared the story briefly of the space shuttle explosion. (Of course because we are in Fl., many of the kids have been to Cape Canaveral). We got ready to move on to the next subject and one of the kids spoke up and said, "Well Mrs. Mosenthin, if they ever ask you to do that thing, just tell them that you are sick and can't do it." I was so confused as to what he was talking about that I didn't really say anything and then some of the other kids chimed in, "Yeah, if they want you to do that writing thing just tell them you can't do it because we wouldn't want the same thing to ever happen to you!" When it finally dawned on me what they were talking about I was quite tickled. I assured them that I didn't think they had to worry about me ever winning a writing contest OR going into outerspace. I thought it was quite cute!