Alas, Poor Pluto...

Bye, bye ROY G. BIV.
So long, My Very Educated Mother...

Just when you get the mnemonic down, the rules change. A color disappears, and a planet drops off the solar system. What's next? A taxonomy rift that will keep King Phillip from Coming Over? Will musicians drop the D note off the scale, so that Good Boys will never again Deserve Fudge?

It bothers me at times that I've forgotten so much of what I've learned. And then to find out that what I remember has been changed?

My cranial database of information feels hopelessly out of date.

Daily it seems new particles are discovered, old theories are debunked and "impossible" problems are solved. I'm immediately drawn back into my old elementary school days, where fact was not a malleable metal and only "theories" were refutable.

Rather, what I learned was FACT — plain and simple. It was something solid that I studied, memorized and regurgitated for all of my teachers to see.

Indigo was firmly planted between blue and violet. Pluto, however small, was suspended somewhere behind Neptune, victim to the sun's own gravitational pull.

Strange how something as simple as revoking a planet's status can shake the foundation of old school paradigms.

I feel a shift coming on...