Aliens Among Us

posted in: Day In The Life 5
Cover of the pulp sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories, October 1957. Image: Wikipedia.

 

The other day, I met a woman who is fully convinced that aliens are living among us. She was very nice!

As for me, with the aliens and all, I’m not so sure. But I figured maybe she knew something I didn’t, so I poured some more coffee and decided to ask a few questions. It occurred to me it might be imprudent to ask for details about such things at lunch. But I decided quickly that a person who believes aliens are living among us would likely not be shy in answering questions about them.

“Can I ask you more about the aliens?” I asked.

“They’re everywhere,” she said, jumping right in. “We’ll likely never know just where. Many of them don’t have actual bodies — or they have bodies we can’t comprehend.”

I nodded and took a bite of pie. No actual bodies, eh? I imagined a green vapor snaking its way through traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway or floating through State Street, scouting out Christmas present ideas. (Look, if these alleged aliens are in Chicago, that’s the kind of stuff they’re going to be up to: There are 48 days till Christmas, people.)

I asked the lady — who was very sweet and interesting for many reasons that did not involve paranormal activity, I’d like to point out — how she came to know about these aliens.

“I’ve long been interested in the topic,” she said. “And I recently attended a conference in Las Vegas. There were over a thousand people there: physicists, scientists, UFO experts. It’s all very real.” Then she leaned in a little to say, with a raised eyebrow, “We were only a few short miles from Area 51.”

What I loved about her is that she was so into what she was into. Seeing someone really into their “thing” is great. Everyone’s got their thing, and it’s great to see a person committed to that thing. The lady told me about a visit to a psychic and said more about the conference, e.g., how the moon landing wasn’t a hoax, but that there were six or seven alien spacecraft on the moon when Buzz and Neil got there. I told the lady I hadn’t heard about that and she gave me a nod like, “Yeah, well, there’s more where that came from.”

She might be right. About all of it or some of it.

Haven’t we all been wrong about something before?