do the manta ray

i remember being 9 years old and driving with my family to our summer place in kennebunkport. it was a wicked long drive and the night was really dark. anybody who has spent much time on backroads back East knows how dark it can get.

my father's job was very stressful and so we sometimes would travel at odd hours just so he could have as much recreation time as possible. my mom would kvetch a little but i never minded much--always been one to keep odd hours myself.

so on this particular night i recall that i looked up and saw....something. it was huge and it was moving through the air like a manta ray. like a bendy saucer. it freaked me out to the point that i had a panic attack--couldn't catch my breath, heart pounding, sweating. i was terrified and thrilled in a way i can't really describe. i knew i was seeing something unnatural, something that shouldn't be there.

i got my mom's attention and pointed wordlessly at the thing. she freaked out too. the thing was sort of hovering and every now and then it would zig and zag. she got my dad's attention and he looked up and muttered something about the "damn things" and then told us to just ignore it, it was just a trick the sky was playing on our eyes. we drove fast and it seemed to follow us briefly, then it zoomed off.

a long time later, when i was home from college for christmas, he admitted that he'd known what it was all along and that my he and my mom had a huge fight over whether he should tell me when we got to our summer place and i got to bed. he said (and he was right) that if i had been told that young i'd have walked around like some kind of geeky weirdo at school, so all in all i'm glad i didn't find out until later that i hadn't been nuts and really had seen a flying saucer.

i think it's interesting how seldom people report manta ray-like ufo experiences. because of my own experience, those are the ones i'm most likely to believe i guess.

reply to post by Slothrop