Memories are strange things where, sometimes one will remember something that happened as a child that you'd otherwise 'forgotten', or at least not
thought about as an item of any importance.
This memory is about possibly the only time i ever saw a 'UFO'. Please note the quotations around UFO.
When I was six, in the early summer, approaching evening, I was called outside by my parents where many of our neighbors were out in the middle of the
street of our little section of neighborhood, pointing up at the sky, looking through telescopes and binoculars at the 'UFO'.
My dad asked me if I wanted to see the 'UFO' too.
I got handed some, what at the time were to me enormous binoculars, where my dad then guided me whereabouts to look.
What I saw was:
It was very high altitude. Looking back now, I'd say it was in the 50k+ altitude range.
After looking at it my satisfaction, I thought to myself it looked more like a weather balloon as seen on National Geographic or some other program,
and was, if anything a little disappointed.
I'd seen cooler stuff sneaking out at night after the parents had gone to sleep, laying out in my driveway watching the night sky in seeing shooting
stars.
I went back inside unimpressed while neighbors still clucked about like chickens about the 'UFO'.
This is when i was six, and on remembering this, it fascinates me how even as a child I could see this plainly as what it in highest probability was
indeed a weather balloon, while grown adults were quite convinced this was an alien spaceship.
Granted, some of the adult proclamations of aliens may have been more for the benefit of the other neighborhood children also getting their turns at
telescopes and binoculars, but, at the same time too, it seems some of this was indeed genuine belief.
Whatever the case, this was likely one of my earlier examples and influences in life where I learned that where one person sees one thing, another
person may see another, even though they're looking at the very same thing.
Human perception is entirely unreliable, and witness testimony regardless of bias, including mine, but especially where fantastic claims are made,
should really be criticised and questioned first before being bought and believed wholesale.
Were I to go back and find one of those neighbors and ask them about the 'UFO' of 19xx, I'd bet serious money they'd have a more fantastic description
than what I've reported above.
Why is this? Am I just immune to imaginative distortions of observation? Do I have no imagination to corrupt and filter anything I observe into
something more sugar coated? Am I lacking some fundamental human disease that allows people to see things that aren't there, that's integral to the
human psychological condition as an aspect of imagination or even stress management for coping with foreign ideas?
Why is it that some people see what simply is for what it is, and can still find it fascinating and even wonderful while others, sometimes many others
need filters which distort the experience into something far more fantastical?
edit on 23-4-2012 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)