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By Dean Norman

Being one of the lucky 31 million U.S. citizens living in the path of the total eclipse of the sun got me to thinking. What if there was no moon to eclipse the sun? The economy would not have gotten the billions-of-dollars boost from tourists traveling to be in the path of the total eclipse. And what else?

A lot of literature, music and legends would not exist. The cow couldn’t jump over the moon if there was no moon to jump over. There would be no werewolves. No harvest moon. No moon for lovers to stare at while they make out.

And there’s more. Scientists think the moon was born when a large asteroid about the size of Mars hit the earth a few billion years ago. It made the earth bigger, and large pieces of debris clumped together to become the moon. Since then both the earth and moon have been spinning slower. Our days are gradually getting longer, and eventually the length of a day will be several days instead of 24 hours. If there are still humans on earth then, how will they adapt to the change?

They say it is the ocean tides smacking against shores that is slowing the spin of the earth. And how fast was the earth rotating before the big asteroid hit to make the moon? Was each day maybe one hour of daylight and one hour of night? Could life as we know it come into existence then? Could the Egyptians have built pyramids with only one hour of daylight to work in? Could baseball or football have been invented before there were electric lights for stadiums? Could corn or soybeans grow in such short periods of sunshine?

Could any life as we know it have even begun or evolved to create humans and all the critters we have? Could it be mere coincidence or random collisions of planets and asteroids that created all of this? Or did some great power send the asteroid to hit earth and…

Well, I would like to have astronomers, philosophers, and ministers think about this, and give us some ideas to think about. It’s fun to think about things that you can’t do anything about.

 — Dean Norman 

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards,The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.