Parenting & Family Quote by Mark Kelly

What lands here is the ordinariness of the origin story. Mark Kelly isn’t selling destiny; he’s describing a crush. The repeated softeners - “I think,” “very,” “something I thought,” the doubled “of, of” - are the verbal equivalent of someone rewinding a memory in real time, trying to keep it honest. That hesitation matters: it resists the polished myth that astronauts (or any public figure) were always chosen. Instead, the line frames ambition as something culturally contagious.

The context does most of the heavy lifting. “Watching the first Apollo missions” signals a particular American childhood: spaceflight as broadcast spectacle, a national hobby you could participate in from your living room. The subtext is that media doesn’t just entertain; it recruits. Apollo becomes a pipeline from wonder to vocation, with TV acting as the launchpad.

Notice the three-part escalation: “fun,” “exciting,” “worthwhile.” The first two are kid language - pure sensation. “Worthwhile” is the adult justification that arrives later, a moral upgrade that makes thrill-seeking legible as service. That shift mirrors how high-risk jobs get narrated in public life: desire first, duty after.

Even with the (oddly mismatched) “musician” label, the quote reads like a backstage confession about inspiration: you see a world that looks bigger than your own, and you want in. It’s not grand rhetoric. It’s a reminder that history’s biggest projects often begin as fandom.