The first human on the moon turned out to be just two weeks younger than my mother.

The “Space Race,” begun with the Soviet Sputnik satellite’s launch, was only four months younger than me.

I was 12 when Apollo 11 landed. The perfect impressionable age for a young male.

The moon landing meant to me what it meant to a lot of guys my age:

The ultimate adventure.

The first steps of “Man” to a strange new world.

The first day of a new era.

I don’t have to tell you things turned out differently.

But we still dream.

Particularly during the 50th anniversary of the Century 21 Exposition.

As part of that, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s staging a “Celebrate Seattle” event on Sept. 16, with astronauts real (Cady Coleman) and fictional (Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols). The Ballet’s orchestra will play parts of Holst’s The Planets and Dvorak’s Song to the Moon.

It’s good to remember yesterday’s future.

But let’s also build ourselves some new dreams for a real future.

A future in which the work of Armstrong and the entire NASA team behind him will not have been in vain.