| The Truth Is Out There |
| by Carrie |
| I don't believe I've told the tale of the time I visited a crop circle. It was first announced on the evening news A farmer in a nearby county had awakened to find a couple of circular chunks taken out of his cornfield, and suddenly he was famous. The road to his property was long, dusty, winding, and pockmarked with treacherous-looking potholes. Just when it became so narrow that two cars couldn't safely pass each other without someone finding himself in an overgrown ditch and I was about to turn back, we were there. I pulled into a broad stretch of trampled field where several cars were already parked. A motley crew of countryfolk were already congregated inside the larger of the two circles, talking puzzledly amongst themselves and generally painting a quaint little scene of human confusion. They'd just been introduced to the concept of something existing outside their bubble, and a few were still finding their legs after the shock. Others were loudly debunking, particularly one guy in a navy T-shirt and baseball cap, who was yelling skeptically at pretty much anyone who would listen. Having no opinion and content to observe, I hung around quietly whistling the X-Files theme, taking it all in. I wanted, out of morbid curiosity, to see if anyone could sway me one way or the other. A kid with a mullet was running around the circle in all directions, crashing on his face every once in a while. The first time he did so, he flew past me and tripped, plunging headlong into the corn. I moved to help him up but he already was, galloping around again as if the fall had knocked a screw loose but he hadn't noticed. "Oh, he's okay; he does that all the time," said a lady I assumed was his mother. And she looked like the exact stereotypical creature endemic to that sort of hick-town locale. (Yes, hick-town locales do indeed exist in Michigan.) She wore white spandex pants and a red shirt, with long red nails and tacky blonde hair, roots showing. She was the perfect cross between Peg Bundy and Ellie-Mae Clampett. But she seemed friendly. The guy in the baseball cap was carrying on at the opposite end of the circle. "It's those damn teens," he was saying. "Somebody played a pretty good prank on you guys." He was the kind of person who enjoys an audience. That never ceases to amuse himself. He would go on, smugly, as long as he held someone's attention, but as soon as he started to lose it, he'd raise his voice to assure that everyone heard. Mullet Kid fell, got back up and galloped past me again. "But it's too perfect," a semi-old woman pointed out. She wore one of those artsy sort of sweatshirts with pastel teddy bear appliques. "People can't do that." "Oh yeah? Gimme a piece of plywood an' I'll make you one just like this," the guy shouted. The kid's mom, apparently a little smarter than she looked, spoke up. "Then why is it charred like that?" She crouched and picked up a piece of cornstalk. "This corn is a different color from the rest." She had a point. Of course the guy ignored her. "Do you think it's alienes?" I asked her. She looked at the sky. "There's a lotta things I don't know, hon. But I'm not ruling it out. I mean, who knows? Maybe we're not alone." She lit a cigarette. I granted her a couple of mental cool-points for admitting she didn't know everything, unlike the guy pontificating nearby, for it's only when we realize how much we don't understand that understanding can begin. But she couldn't be that smart-- I wondered if she'd smoked like that while pregnant with Mullet Kid. My dad seemed to be interiewing the farmer. The guy whose crop people were trampling all over. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. He wore flannel and spit on the ground. He seemed tired, explaining calmly, levelly, that he'd lost a lot of produce, just wanted everyone to go away, and that frankly he didn't give a rip about aliens so long as he could provide for his family. My dad told him he should've charged admission. This was true-- a substantial crowd of spectator had gathered, and the same questions were brought up all over again. The guy in the baseball cap had abandoned his cause and stalked off, declaring sarcastically, "Look, a spaceship! Oh wait, it's a minivan." He lingered momentarily to see if anyone had been listening. They weren't. UFO or SUV did not matter. They were too busy debating. Oh, the irony. So much for intelligent life. It boggles the mind. So what, you may be asking, the hell is the point? Which side did I end up taking? Was it authentic, or what? I can honestly say I still haven't a clue. I gained absolutely zero insight into whether there's aliens out there, but I did gain insight on us: humans. The way a shock, something different, can challenge us. The way a different point of view makes people think. If martian men had been there, hiding in the tall corn with their kill-o-zap pistols, observing us, what would they think? They'd probably say, "I've seen enough. Beam me back up." Pod people aside, I found the Truth, all right, and it was waaayyy out there. Yet so close it's funny. |
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| "You've got to be f***in' kidding." |
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| Seen Elvis at a gas station or Jesus in a tortilla chip? Tell me about it. |