The Touch Of The Stars

As a child of the 1960s I lived in the suburbs south of Boston. Summer nights were filled with silence; no cars, no voices, no music. Every house was a tomb and the deep darkness often found a pre-teen boy stealing out the back door to spread a blanket on the ground, strip off his pajamas and lie on the lawn, looking to the sky.

My ritual was always the same.

I was not seeking the mystery of God in the celestial night, but an aberration in the galactic traffic.

"Oh, UFO come take me away."

Alien abduction was a better fate than suffering pubescence in the suburbs, yet no flying saucers snatched my body. I was stranded on Earth along with billions of other humans. None of us were going to the stars, for our solar system is located on the most remote edge of the Milky Way.

Think as distant from New York as Great Slave Lake.

Spaceships warp past Earth without deccelerting. Our planet isn't on the Inter-Galactic Guide. A cosmic billboard on the Moon WINE AND DINE AT EARTH might help trade with the passing aliens, however Earthlings are stuck on the planet, especially after President Nixon had NASA abandon a Mars landing, colonization of the Moon, or a permanent space station in favor of Space Shuttles of the Space program.

From that moment on I felt we were alone, despite claims to the contrary by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell that UFOs regularly visit this blue planet and not only the cow-mutilators of Wyoming.

His conversations with old-timers from Roswell strengthened his own experiences in Space and Edgar Mitchell is convinced that NASA and the Pentagon have been vigorously prevented the truth from reaching a public more interested in potato chips than UFOs.

"Is there life outside of Earth?"

The Colonel thinks so. although my late father considered billions spent on NASA a waste.

"There's nothing out there?"

No go-go bars for sure or romantic lakes or no marching bands.

Tubas take up too much room in a spaceship, although I once saw a tuba on a Star Trek episode.

The former astronaut also says that the three crafts once hovering over Phoenix were not ours. They were from another planet and not Mars either. Someplace much farther away and we can't even estimate that distance with our pea brains, but I no longer want to go to the stars.

I have four kids.

A three loving daughters and two busy boys.

Plus two grandchildren.

Those are my aliens, for ET are us.

Children from future.

MR. SPACEMAN by the Byrds 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoD0-5DTqpU