Jay Manifold has a story of a little girl and a telescope.

I brought out my 90mm refractor for my son's Cub Scout troop to look through early this Spring. I turned it to the Great Nebula in Orion, the Pleades, Saturn, and Jupiter. They were impressed. One of the parents, amazed by his first view of Saturn exclaimed he "couldn't believe it had been in the sky his whole life and he had never seen it."

Reminds me of the time I was in Peru, up in the mountains above Cuzco, in the dark, with Poul and Karen Anderson, David Levy (yes, David "I discover comets that smack planets" Levy) and a group of other like-minded Americans. We had a flock of telescopes we had carted there with us and we were spending the night diggin' the Southern Sky. Suddenly out of the dark materalized several llamas, followed by their herders, followed questions and replies in about four languages. The herders ended up hogging the scopes. A good time was had by all, including the llamas. :-)