This is another one of those days that seems like it was stupidly timed. There are meteor showers, but none of the famous ones—why not wait 60 days and do it in August when the Perseids show up? I dug a little further, and apparently it is History Stuff: June 30 is the anniversary of the Tunguska Event, a big ol’ meteor explosion that flattened a chunk of Siberia in 1908.

I’ve only seen one really spectacular meteor shower. It was in 1998, when I lived in Florida, and I went out to the beach at midnight to see it—just me and a bunch of other night owls crowding the parking lot. It was truly amazing, like a leisurely and quiet fireworks show with something to see every second. It was supposed to last three nights, but when I went out the second night with my then-boyfriend, it was a relative bust, more like looking for fireflies in late summer. There were a few, but it wasn’t worth sitting outside in the heat long enough to see very many.

Hope triumphs over experience, however, and I keep dragging my family out well past bedtime on nights that the news tells me it’s gonna be great. I think my kid has decided they are a myth. We all trooped out to our front step one frosty night in Virginia bundled in blankets and sleeping bags, and although we had a nice time gabbing, we didn’t see much of anything. That’s pretty much been the drill every time. Given that it’s Monday, I’m not sure I’ll be trying tonight, but never say never!

Did you ever wonder why the sage advice is always to go out looking when respectable, sane people have been asleep for hours? When I was a kid, l assumed it wasn’t just scientists having a laugh at my expense or that the meteors were jerks that wanted to leave me sleep-deprived, but I did assume it was similar to why people died in alphabetical order in the obituaries—not that there were MORE meteors to see at that hour, just that’s when it’s darkest outside and you can see them best. But my rocket scientist grandfather set me straight. It’s because after midnight, wherever you are on Earth is facing the direction of Earth’s orbit, which means the meteors are coming at you head-on instead of some other angle. He said it’s similar to how it’s easier to see a baseball that’s thrown at your face from dead ahead of you than it is to see one thrown at your ear from the side or over your shoulder from behind. (My mom barked a laugh when I happened to tell her his explanation and then shared a story about he taught her how to catch by sticking her in front of a garage door so that if she missed the ball it ricocheted into her from behind and felt none too pleasant. “And yeah, it’s f’n impossible to see the one that hits you in the tailbone,” was her wry conclusion to that tale.)

Fortunately, the odds are pretty slim that a meteor will hit you in the back of the knee or anywhere else. Most burn up in the atmosphere, as I reckon we all learned in grade school. According to NASA, the most frequent events are smallish objects hitting the ground with extremely localized damage, and this happens every 10–20 years. So you’re probably fine.

But maybe go out and look for them tonight anyway!