I waited my whole life to see one.
I’d seen Star Wars and The X-Files. I read about the aliens at Roswell. I watched all the flying saucer movies. I even saw the Sputnik satellite zip across the sky in the 1960s.
But never once did I see a real UFO.
For years, I gazed into the night sky, hoping, yearning, waiting to see just one tiny flying saucer, I’d settle for a flying beer coaster. Anything, but it never showed.
Until one dark and starry night last Oct. 24 when I looked up from my lanai and there it was, a real live UFO with blinking red and yellow lights!
It had all the bells and whistles, portholes, a shining bulb out front, and a blinking tail light. It was a UFO alright, or close enough for me.
It was flying over my lanai as if to say, “Here I am, you finally saw one, hope you’re happy now.” Then it floated up Hualalai and drifted out of sight.
I ran to the phone and called Civil Defense babbling that I saw a UFO. The Civil Defense guy thought, “another nut case” then told me he’d got about 20 calls that night about the flying saucer. So I wasn’t crazy, or at least I had company.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night watching the twinkling UFO pass above me in my mind.
But of course the scientists had to pop my bubble, and all the bubbles of the moon beamers across the islands that saw it too.
Three days later the astronomers announced in the paper that it wasn’t a UFO but an old Chinese rocket booster that plummeted to Earth. What we saw wasn’t a spacecraft full of little green men, just some space junk sputtering down like a burnt out firecracker.
The scientists laid out the usual line. They’d been tracking it for years, every telescope on Earth was watching it. They had charts, arrows, definite proof it was just a “run of the mill” rocket plopping in the ocean. No big deal.
Everyone could go back to their coffee and paper and rest easy.
I wasn’t fooled one bit, I knew it was a UFO. Burnt out Chinese rockets don’t have red and yellow blinking lights and portholes.
I was so sure but your eyes can play tricks on you. Maybe the scientific guys were right, maybe not.
It’s the old story. People swear they see UFOs and the scientists explain them away as space junk. It’s their job to placate the public and assure them that a massive fleet of flying saucers is not zooming here to obliterate the Earth.
And even though the space crowd is forever ranting about the government covering up the fact there are UFOs, it’s a good thing they do. Most people could handle the truth but there is the lunatic fringe, like the jolly group that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, that could not handle the truth. They would freak out.
The minute the government revealed that UFOs are real and have landed at a mall or a meadow near you, every wacko with a shotgun would be blasting away at anything that moved or looked weird. Trashcans and Frisbees and anything resembling a flying saucer would go first. There’d be an outer space man behind every bush.
You better hope the government keeps denying UFOs, otherwise it would be chaos.
There are probably aliens cruising around in space, with a couple billion other planets there has to be somebody out there but us humans.
When they do show up, I hope we treat aliens from outer space better than we treat aliens here on Earth.
Some believe they are spindly little weirdos with ray guns ready to zap everyone in sight. Others believe they are benevolent beings from the Pleiades come down to guide us through difficult times like a Trump presidency or a Spam shortage.
Whatever you believe, flying saucer or flopping rocket booster, after a few Mai Tais you’re bound to see all kinds of crazy things up in the sky.
But if little green men come down and step out of their saucer, we’ll be waiting with leis and pupus to welcome them.
E Komo Mai Martians!
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com.