UFOs and such...
When I saw this comic the other day in the Seattle Times, I laughed out loud - on the bus. I remembered an incident, that makes my father laugh to this day, that occurred when I was walking home my friend Jeni Taylor. Her house was about a mile away off of of ol' state route 422. My street, the last street before her house, was a new neighborhood, essentially a street carved into old farm land. (And I mean old, it had everything you would expect in the woods like rusted nails, random barbed wire fences, old mattresses on the edge of the field, which was where our house was.)

In the summer time, she would come over to my house to hang out. In the 6th grade, we had a 9 p.m. curfew which meant it was dark in NE Ohio and undoubtedly hot and muggy. One night I was walking Jeni home, or atleast to the end of my street where she had to walk about 500 ft on the busy state road - often her Dad was often waiting for her at the end of their driveway. (Um, which is why I never "snuck out" -where the hell was I going to go? Into the woods with rusty nails? To the neighbors house with little kids? Until you drove, you were ISOLATED). We were heading to her place and it got progressively darker as we reached 422 as there were few houses at that end of the street - and no streetlights. Off in one of the old barns, there was a blinking orange light. In the barn. A blinking orange light. We looked at it for a minute and walked a little further trying to figure out what it was? A blinking orange light. Then our 6th grade minds races off - there could only be one thing in that barn - an alien. Holy crap.

We went back to my house, doing our best not to break off into a dead run, and searched for my dad. We didn't know what to tell him, so we told him the true. "There's an alien in the barn by the road." Of course the meant that he wouldn't drive Jeni home - he had to go check it out. (Damn!) He walked down the street and I think at one point we both might have grabbed his hands (long after it was cool to hold hands with your parents) and as we approached the barn, my dad looked for the blinking light..pause... Girls, it's just a construction barrel with a light on it...

Whatever. It totally was an alien. He just left before we were able to get back to the barn.