Have you noticed the current interest in unidentified flying objects (UFO) sightings? They’ve been getting a great deal of press lately since secret military videos have been leaked or released. Some documented UFO sightings have been in our area in the not-to-distant past. Over Aurora, we’ve had five orange, fireball-type objects, with other observers describing a color-changing ball. A bunch of at least 20 orange balls was seen by two individuals in Boulder Hill. Another group of six orange lights were spotted floating northeast over Oswego.
Nationally, the most commonly seen objects were lights, then fireballs, circles next, then triangles on down to a dozen or so miscellaneous shapes such as cubes, 1949 Chevy water pumps, cigars, bongs, mushrooms and enemas. You have your most famous sightings, some with abductions tossed in for good measure, such as the Betty and Barney Hill Abduction in New Hampshire, the Pascagoula Abduction in Mississippi (I would suspect a good number of persons wouldn’t mind being abducted from Mississippi), Roswell with real aliens tossed in for good measure, the Phoenix Lights viewed and recorded by zillions of people, and George W. Bush, when he was president, at the Caterpillar plant in Montgomery.
In the sake of full disclosure, I have to mention my own true actual UFO sighting.
One warm September evening in1981 around 9 p.m., my wife and I were driving west on Boughton Road toward Rt.53 and our Bolingbrook home. It was fairly dark, the area was not built up as it is today. Just the light of the full moon shined in on us through the open driver’s side window.
I glanced outside to sneak a peek at the big orange harvest moon. I began telling my wife to look at the big moon, but before I could finish my sentence, I realized the actual full moon was a bit farther back, about even with and higher than my shoulder. I looked toward the orange moon, when it suddenly sped off through the clouds, causing them to glow as it passed through. It then reappeared and took a dive toward the horizon.
“Did you see that?” I said.
She nodded in the affirmative.
Neither of us knew what to say and that was the end of it. I knew it wasn’t a reflection because my window was open. It also flew in and out of the clouds.
A few days later, something resembling an obese Richard Simmons Chia Pet appeared at my door, intent on selling me whole life insurance. I was somewhat skeptical of this character that had a voice like I’d imagined Big Bird would sound if Elmo were pulling out his tail feathers while his beak was full of disposable diapers, but I listened politely to the spiel. It contained questions such as, “Have you ever recited Hamlet’s soliloquy to a weasel?” When this being finally requested the first month’s payment in GMO-free rat droppings, I slammed the door. A few seconds later, I peeked out the window and the odd salesperson was nowhere in sight.
I must confess I have no evidence this incident and the UFO sighting are somehow related. But isn’t it odd that someone supposedly selling life insurance in Bolingbrook would have the gall to request an up-front payment without even offering a discount for paying the first year of coverage in full?
Now it’s rant time for me (this is becoming a habit). There’s a reader of The Voice who is becoming a semi-regular contributor to the “Reader’s Commentary.” Apparently, this reader is a strange visitor from another planet where there is no climate crisis, polar ice is not melting away, the temperature of the his world isn’t slowly rising, and there’s plenty of oil, natural gas, coal, water and other resources to squander for heat, electricity, pour on useless lawns, and power gas-guzzling autos, all of which he feels the nasty government is forcing us to give up. Emissions will just magically disappear into the atmosphere or run off into the sewers and disappear in our rivers and lakes.
Surely I jest. He is of course speaking of planet Earth, where a large number of us live. I guess he’s avoided the satellite photos of disappearing polar ice and glaciers, or left-biased news coverage of gradually rising sea levels causing floods in coastal cities. Don’t get me wrong; I love old cars and classic cars. I still drive a 1987 version of one. But the world changes and these beloved vehicles soon no longer will be allowed on our streets, replaced by efficient electric and other types of vehicles. I may not be dancing in those streets, but that’s life. All through high school I drove a 1929 Nash, which would never be allowed on the road for everyday use today. I wish it were, but things change. Get over it.
His argument that the Chinese are polluting the environment like crazy so why should we have to stop, is one every eight-year-old kid in the world has used since the beginning of time: If he/she can do it, why can’t I? So I suppose he thinks as long as there’s one source of pollution, we have every right to add our own.
This reader must not have any children because he doesn’t seem to care what type of world is left for them. I have children, a grandchild, and I do care.
Somewhere overhead there’s a wandering UFO searching for its missing citizen. Hey, ET, phone home.