My friend Nick was pretty smart. In fact, we used to call him "smarter than the average kid" (in the Yogi Bear sense), or at least, that's what he called himself. He knew all the times tables. Quick... what's 5x7?? Too late! Nick's already answered. Oh yeah. He could tell you all about military missions, airplanes, explosives, and brain eating amoebas in your favorite waterparks. He also could burp on command like a champ, really loud and beastly, and even taught me some of his burping wisdom. So as far as I was concerned, he really was smarter than the average kid. He did sneak nunchucks into school on many occasions, so yeah, of course we were friends. Checks out. And so... anything he said was pretty much gospel. Nick was convinced they were holding aliens in Area 51 and doing autopsies, and I agreed, adding, "who do you think works there?" He suggested that people don't work there like a normal job, they are born, raised, work, and die there and never see the outside world. Yes, for us, Independence Day was a documentary. That's an 'unsolved mystery' our old Lifetime channel friend Robert Stack took to his grave.
Was Independence Day not a documentary? Wasn't that really area 51? I don't know. Nick did. His parents let him watch ALL the Alien movies, and he said they were all pretty badass, so ... he knows what he's talking about. And you know what else? He had some pretty sweet nunchucks.
This is all heavily ironic, for nothing terrified me more as a kid (and even now as I think about it), than being abducted by aliens... that and ghosts... and girls. I knew there was no monster under the bed, but aliens? I wasn't so sure. You could say this fear was also ironic because if you talked to my brother, he would've told you nothing would've pleased him more than seeing me get "taken." He would have held the door for them. Indeed, it might have explained a few things. The feeling was mutual. It didn't help that a new "aliens destroy humanity" movie came out every year in the 90's, and of course, my parents kept renting them... even the horribly terrifying Mars Attacks, which haunted my dreams for weeks. Those eyes, those brains, those ray guns turning people into skeletons, the totally wasted all-star cast, the death of Danny Devito! ("Look, don't shoot me, I'm a lawyer. If you wanna take over the world... you're gonna need a lawyer!") It was a horrible movie (and that's coming from a guy who likes Tim Burton).
Robert Stack probably was an alien, but I had my doubts about some kids at school. Humans? Or aliens wearing human skin? How could you tell? Well, it turned out that Nick seemed to know exactly how to spot an alien (because yeah, the kid knew everything). He told me, and this is 100% true, that if they tell you they're a pack of aliens living out behind the school eating "shiny paper foods" (the place was littered with potato chip bags)... it probably makes sense to play it safe and take their word for it. "Your brain could be next." But then I started having my suspicions about Nick... he seemed to know too much...
How else could you explain his advanced mathematics computer brain unless it wasn't some kind of... advanced alien brain or techno-implant? Wait... wasn't that him eating potato chips at lunch? Look at the inside of his chip bag! "Shiny paper food!" Wasn't that him wiping his boogers on the window? Hmmm... that specimen seemed a bit too green if you asked me. And all the ear-spliting burping on command? Sorry but I know the sound of a Xenomorph when I hear one! And the smell of his breath... whoo! Like sauerkraut and crusty gym sock! Yeah... definitely not human.
That did it. The kid was definitely an alien.
But I could never be sure, and I didn't want him knowing I might've been on to him. He never invited me over, despite telling me he wanted to many times. Seems suspicious, right? At some point in the 4th grade I remember we had some kind of falling out... probably because I was too close to uncovering the SECRET. I remember he threatened to use his nunchucks on me once, and I told the teacher he had brought them to school. After that, I was sure he was gonna come to school and pound me, or do worse, and I actually remember dreading going to school for a few days. But weirdly enough, he didn't show up. Day by day went by, and he was absent. And then for some reason I never fully knew, I never saw him again. Well, it was close to the end of the school year anyway... or maybe he just jumped back in his craft and went back to his planet. Either way, I want to believe.
Or as Home Improvement once put it, parodying the X-Files:
"The truth is out there..." -- Tim Taylor
"No Taylor, you're the one who's out there." --Jill Taylor
Dude. Aliens exist. Remember the whole 4 corners sighting thing? The Phoenix lights? I was in Kingman Arizona at the corner of Arizona and I totally witnessed a huge set of lights in the sky. They were pretty close to land and they stayed above our house. A few others and my family and uncles' family sat on chairs and just watched. We called the police and they all said a thousand others were seeing the same thing. It was so weird and creepy. i think this happened in 1995 or 96!
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty cool. I never saw any strange lights that I couldn't explain... came close once, but it was just a helicopter circling around a fire in town.
DeleteMy dad once said he saw one when he was a teen. It was a red light that stopped in the sky and then kept going. He went home to tell what he'd seen, and his stepmom was there listening to a live radio news report about people calling in having seen this strange red light flying around. And you know, whatever your dad says has to be true. hehe