Scene opens to a black screen filled with small bright stars. 

Narrator: When I was born, the stars were stolen from the sky before my eyes were even open.

The lights fade, leaving just a black screen. The camera changes to five children lying on blankets

in the back of an old, rusted pick-up truck. They are all laughing, talking, and pointing at the sky. 

Background noise is of the children chatting and laughing.

Narrator: I was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa when I was six months old. This means I am night blind. Luckily my type is   not the most vicious or devastating, but still left my void filled with wonder.

 Point of view slowly pulls up to the sky, filled with stars and a meteor shower.

Narrator: While my cousins would look up in awe at the stars, I could only stare up at a blank black canvas. I would study the seven points of light I could see, my bright friends surrounded by my imagination of what I was missing.

The screen slowly fades to blackness, leaving seven points of light randomly spread across. 

Scene opens to the father and daughter in the front seat of a pick up truck.

Narrator: When I was sixteen, my father did the things that all good dads promise their children they'll do. He gave me the galaxy.

The father gives his daughter a package. She begins to open it, showing anticipation on her face 

while he has a gentle smile on his. The camera doesn't show what is in the box.

Narrator: With the help of a military surplus catalog, he ordered a pair of Russian military night vision goggles. When he got them, we waited for the night to fall and then, we tried them out, after breathlessly reading the instructions over and over and over again in anticipation.

The father and daughter are now standing outside at night, holding hands. The goggles are in her hand. They stare up at the sky together. She starts to put on the glasses.

Narrator: Dad turned off our yard light and we went outside.  I put on the night vision goggles and removed the lens caps and looked up into the sky.  It was a personal miracle.  Stretching above me in uncountable points of light as far as I could see, there were stars, some of them clustered so tightly together they made swirling patterns of white against the inky darkness.  I stared.

 The screen shows the same black sky with the seven lights. The camera's point of view is from the narrator's eyes. The screen changes to emerald green, like the night vision lens has been added to the camera. The green sky shows everything the narrator sees. A shooting star flies across the screen.

Narrator: I'd had people describing the stars to me all my life.  What I discovered was that everyone will tell you something different, because they all see them in their own way.  None of what they had tried to describe to me could possibly match the glittering arch of that night sky.

Shot pulls back down to the father and daughter standing in the yard, looking up at the sky while she wears the glasses. The daughter whispers "Thank you," as she holds her dad's hand.

Narrator: I still wasn't seeing what others would have, but that didn't matter. I was breathless under an arm of the Milky Way that I had always simply had to take on faith was there.

Screen fades back to emerald green, while still on the father and daughter.

Narrator: When I was sixteen years old, my father gave me the stars, handing them to me in the emerald green trappings of science. Someone stole them away from my grasp again a short time later. What they can never steal is the memory, and the faith of what lies beyond my seven old bright friends.

 ------