The Loneliness of a UFO Virgin by Marco M. Pardi

People have asked me if I have ever seen a UFO, an unidentified flying object. While others may give, or take that question as a straightforward inquiry into fact, calling only for the binary choice of “yes” or “no”, my mind just doesn’t work that way. My mind searches the interlocutor, scanning for that mirror I know must be there, that mirror which will show me how I look to him. Will I see in that mirror an image of how I look to me? Or will I, in that mirror, be wearing a shiny colander on my head, its legs connected by arcane twirls of tin foil?

Certainly the question of whether one has seen a UFO is a disturbing one. But, not for obvious reasons. The question is disturbing because it jars my equanimity, tipping me almost deliciously toward that mode wherein I quickly compress the questioner’s airway until their bobbing head signals assent to re-examine the simplicity with which they frame their world, and thus their questions.

Growing up in a part of the world where for months the sky is filled with identifiable falling objects – snowflakes, and Terra Firma is filled with identifiable but questionable objects – other neighborhood boys, one quickly learns to discern the snowflake, albeit driven sideways by wind, from the small planetary white mass, most likely possessed of a gravel core which we euphemistically identify as an incoming snowball. Some kids on the way home may have likened themselves to robins dodging the neighborhood hawks on their journey. Others, need I say me, may have envisioned a lion enjoying his dinner, until one of the circling mindless jackals becomes too confident.

Whether snowballs in winter, crab apples in season, or just plain rocks, those flying objects, as were their means of propulsion, were readily identifiable:

OOTMs, Objects Other Than Me. And the life forms propelling them had names known to me. 

The world, and indeed the night time skies, are filled with OOTMs, movement (“flying”) being perceived sooner in some, later in others and not at all in the rest. So why all the fuss over a relative few? Because they are not Man made? In that case, we’ve got a lot of fussing to do. Because they must have been made by life forms more intelligent than Man? Er…pardon me, but that says much about Man’s egocentricity. And, how is it that throughout recorded history, orally or written, so many people in so many places have seen them yet so many have not?

This might be a good time to say I have not; seen a UFO, that is. But wait. In the question, “Have you ever seen a UFO?” there is a hidden circularity. What I see, I identify, as a thing if nothing else. (This might not be a good time to say I see things.) Odysseus knew this naming trap when, confronted by the Cyclops, he gave his name as “No-Man”. We all know what happened after his botched Lasic procedure, leaving old One Eye wandering about screaming that No-Man had blinded him. So in this case I cannot say I have seen a UFO if, in fact, I have seen no thing. Then, I would sound like Sgt Schultz, assuring Colonel Hogan that, “I see no-thing…I hear no-thing…I know no-thing!” Where’s the fun in that?

On the other end of the spectrum there are the people I met at a local MUFON (Mutual U.F.O. Network) meeting. At first I wasn’t sure what they shared mutually (beside their taste in colander-tin foil apparel), but listening to their assignment of volunteer positions for sitting out at night on shifts, watching the skies was a start. When I first got a car in high school I also did that. But, the windows fogged so quickly my reports soon became incoherent. What really clarified their position on “unidentified” was their shared affirmation that, unless they could clearly see the markings and/or configuration of a known aircraft this was to be reported as a UFO. No doubt the FAA and NORAD were on speed dial. And what if those diabolical “Greys”, or whomever, disguised their craft to look like Air Tran?

Years ago I gave a public lecture using slides and audio-tapes I and three others had taken in night time cemeteries and an open, walk-through mausoleum. One of the mausoleum slides clearly showed a small light source, so powerful that the names of the deceased (on the wall niches) were readable. And, the affixed bud vases on the niches threw shadows conforming to the light source. No one in the audio-video crew saw any light during filming; but there it was, and we had no explanation. At the conclusion of the lecture a little, old woman (are any old women not little?) came up to tell me she knew what it was. “It was a UFO, of course. It flew in the open end to watch you. After all, we don’t know that there is a size limit on them, do we?”

But all this is a peripheral way of expressing a deeply held emotional conundrum. As a child I spent more time than was wise outside. Basically, it was my way of living in a sane world, since everyone else was inside. If frostbite was interesting to read about, the real thing must certainly be interesting. Any kid can look up and see the halo effect of ice crystals in the atmosphere, seeming to cling around the moon. But how about the Aurora Borealis? Now that, fellow Space Rangers, is a treat.

Although I don’t recall seeing Sputnik (Russian: “traveling companion”) which was launched in 1957, I routinely watched Telstar (July 1962) streaking across the night sky while I lay atop a dune in the Sahara desert. I knew the timing of its orbit, but also knew that waving a flashlight at it and yelling, “Take me!” (as I had done with UFO reports in the ’50’s) would do no good. Still, I read science fiction obsessively, especially Robert Heinlein.

My discovery of a genre which portrayed life on other planets was an epiphany of the early 1950’s, a feeling much like the day I discovered I could move my eyebrows independently.

Through late night television movies I always defended the “aliens”, knowing in my heart that their way was better. After all, I had been transplanted as a child into American society; the seed of iconoclasm had been planted. Later, of course, it blossomed into a career as an Anthropologist – still searching for those aliens, still knowing in my heart that…….

So, I’m puzzled. Why is it that those life forms who threw snow covered rocks and called me immigrant based names as a kid get to see the UFOs, even get to have visitors in the bedrooms and strange medical probings while I, a sympathetic soul at the very least, enjoy the occasional Star Trek rerun and watch the Science Channel? Speaking of which, there’s a FireFly re-run tonight, with Christina Hendricks. Those NORAD reports will just have to wait.