Good riddance

Oh, Pluto, you devil, all my life you’ve had me fooled, but this relationship is over.

How long did you think you could keep up this charade? You with your bad-guy image and your supposed “moons.” Moons, my ass! You revolve around a common barycenter with them; how dare you call yourself a planet? And physically—well—just look at yourself. You’re hardly a real sphere, all bulging around the middle. You’re pathetic. You can barely hold yourself together.

It’s not just me, either. I won’t be the only one you’ll be leaving in your wake. Poor Clyde Tombaugh, no longer a planetary discoverer. Thank God he didn’t live to see this day. He’d have been crushed. And Venetia Phair (née Burney), remember her? The 11-year-old girl who named you? She’s in her ’80s now. You’re breaking an old woman’s heart. “Lord of the Underworld.” That’s exactly where you belong.

You know, it should be so easy to dismiss you, so cold and distant, but I can’t shake all these regrets. All those wasted years, hanging on to the belief that you were a ninth planet. I wish I’d never heard of you. And what about those star maps we sent out with our exploratory spacecraft? They all show a system with nine planets. Nine! How are alien races supposed to find us now, asshole?!

Go ahead, blame it on other people. You can tell yourself that if the scientists hadn’t “interfered,” things would be just as they were before. You can delude yourself all you want, Pluto. It won’t change anything. This time, it actually was all about you.

So, go on, get out of this solar system. Go hang out with you Kuiper Belt buddies and leave me alone. I take that back. I won’t be alone; there are eight perfectly good planets out there for me.

Liar.