Afghan Moon Story

In Afghanistan, a special operations soldier was speaking with an Afghan army partner about a difficult problem they needed to fix. The Afghan soldier shook his head and said, “You’re out of your mind. It can’t be done.”

The American soldier replied, “We hit a golf ball on the moon in 1971. We can get this done.”

The Afghan soldier stopped and stared at him. “Wait—what did you just say?”

The American repeated himself.

The Afghan soldier laughed. “You hit a golf ball on the moon? What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying Americans went to the moon,” the soldier said. “And while we were there, we hit a golf ball. We do hard things. We can do this hard thing.”

The Afghan soldier gave him a puzzled look and said, “You can’t go to the moon.”

“Yes, we did,” the American said. “We put a man on the moon.”

The Afghan soldier shook his head. “You can’t put a man on the moon. The moon is only this big,” he said, holding up his hand to show how small the moon looked from Earth.

One factual note: the moon landing was in 1969, but Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon during Apollo 14 in 1971, not 1969.