All's Well that Roswell.

As a youngen', I used to love when my relatives got together and talked about times they saw UFOs. This happened to my family a lot more than should be possible and their stories of sightings used to fascinate me and spook me at the same time. There was nothing like getting mysterious, immortal feelings from the thought that life existed elsewhere and my family witnessed it! 

I carried this fascination with me throughout high school and when reading Whitley Strieber's Communion, I couldn't wait until the day I was abducted and studied. I knew I'd be chosen.  That is why, when I met a gorgeous woman who worked the counter at Estee Lauder, I thought my time had finally come. This model-could-be used to tell me that she was from another planet and was here on Earth to study humans so she could have a better understanding of how her species evolved as they did. I was happy when she'd take me to lunch and tell me about her latest return to her home planet and about the multiple scientists who were here with her taking notes on our kind.  I wanted to know, sincerely, what they were learning.

Years passed and my fascination of alien beings was traded in for an obsession with academics (another species that seem to be from another planet). I haven't thought about this alien fetish until yesterday, when my father and I drove to pick up my truck at a repair shop. He started talking about this cool film he saw called Roswell and how it was fictionalized truth or honest fiction -- he couldn't recall. The point was, while I was heading towards a steep indentation to my bank account - the truck - he was unraveling all that excitement I had as a young kid.
And then he raised the index finger of his right hand, which was a glowing, bright ball of red. He looked at me and said, "ouch" and I freaked out. Actually, no. That didn't happen, but how cool would it be if it did? I wouldn't be a son of a Butch, but I could be a son of Wutch, from the planet Woocha cha. But not today. Nope.  No abduction.  No strange lights in the sky.  Only the fact that my middle name is Ripley, the same name as Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien.